Still that laugh thrilled and mocked him all the way to Berkeley Square
and lured him on and on through the night's mysterious dreams.




CHAPTER III


In the drawing room of her mansion on Grosvenor Square, Lady Alice
Mordaunt was pouring tea, and talking as usual the same trifling
commonplaces that had on a previous occasion excited her cousin's
disdain. Opposite her sat her mother, Lady Fletcher, a perfect model of
the well-bred English matron, while Opal Ledoux, in the daintiest and
fluffiest of summer costumes, was curled up like a kitten in a corner of
the window-seat, apparently engrossed in a book, but in reality watching
the passers-by.

From her childhood up she had lived in a Castle of Dreams, which she had
peopled with the sort of men and women that suited her own fanciful
romantic ideas, and where she herself was supposed to lie asleep until
her ideal knight, the Prince Charming of the story, came across land
and sea to storm the Castle and wake her with a kiss.

It was made up of moonbeams and rays of sunshine and
rainbow-gleams--this dream--woven by fairy fingers into so fragile a
cobweb that it seemed absurd to think it could stand the winds and
torrents of Grown-Up Land; but Opal, in spite of her eighteen years, was
still awaiting the coming of her ideal knight, though the stage setting