breakfast.


III.

Into the row of splendidly inert houses known as Chelmsford Gardens,
Austin Selwyn turned his course. A couple of saddle-horses were
standing outside No. 8, held by a groom of expressionless countenance.
From No. 3 a butler emerged, looked at the morning, and retired.
Elsewhere inaction reigned.

Ringing the bell, Selwyn was admitted into the music-room of the
previous night's scene. The portrait of a famous Elizabethan beauty
looked at him with plump and saucy arrogance. In place of the
crackling fire a new one was laid, all orderly and proper, like a set
of new resolutions. The genial disorder of the chairs, moved at the
whim of the Olympians, had all been put straight, and the whole room
possessed an air of studied correctness, as though it were anxious to
forget the previous evening's laxity with the least possible delay.

'Good-morning.'

Elise Durwent swept into the room with an impression of boundless
vitality. She was dressed in a black riding-habit with a divided
skirt, from beneath which a pair of glistening riding-boots shone with
a Cossack touch. Her copper hair, which was arranged to lie rather low
at the back, was guarded by a sailor-hat that enhanced to the full the
finely formed features and arched eyebrows. There was an extraordinary
sense of youthfulness about her--not the youthfulness of immaturity,
but the stimulating quality of the spirit.