was no gambling. It was an immense apartment, apparently a ball-room;
but at present it was quite unoccupied. There were green velvet benches
all around it, and a great polished floor stretched away, shining in the
light of chandeliers adorned with innumerable glass drops. Miss Vivian
stood a moment on the threshold; then she passed in, and they stopped
in the middle of the place, facing each other, and with their figures
reflected as if they had been standing on a sheet of ice. There was no
one in the room; they were entirely alone.

"Why don't you recognize me?" Bernard murmured quickly.

"Recognize you?"

"Why do you seem to forget our meeting at Siena?"

She might have answered if she had answered immediately; but she
hesitated, and while she did so something happened at the other end of
the room which caused her to shift her glance. A green velvet porti;
agere suspended in one of the door-ways--not that through which our
friends had passed--was lifted, and Gordon Wright stood there, holding
it up, and looking at them. His companions were behind him.

"Ah, here they are!" cried Gordon, in his loud, clear voice.

This appeared to strike Angela Vivian as an interruption, and Bernard
saw it very much in the same light.