movement--beautiful women in wonderful attire fluttered to and fro
like gaily-plumaged birds among the conventionally dark-clothed
men who stood about in that aimless fashion they so often affect
when disinclined to talk or to make themselves agreeable,--and
there was a pleasantly subdued murmur of voices,--cultured voices,
well-attuned, and incapable of breaking into the sheep-like
snigger or asinine bray. Innocent, keeping close beside her "god-
mother," watched the animated scene with happy interest,
unconscious that many of those present watched her in turn with a
good deal of scarcely restrained curiosity. For, somehow or other,
rumour had whispered a flying word or two that it was possible
she--even she--that young, childlike-looking creature--might be,
and probably was the actual author of the clever book everybody
was talking about, and though no one had the hardihood to ask her
point-blank if the report was true, people glanced at her
inquisitively and murmured their "asides" of suggestion or
incredulity, finding it difficult to believe that a woman could at
any time or by any means, alone and unaided, snatch one flower
from the coronal of fame. She looked very fair and sweet and NON-
literary, clad in a simple white gown made of some softly clinging
diaphanous material, wholly unadorned save by a small posy of
natural roses at her bosom,--and as she stood a little apart from
the throng, several artists noticed the grace of her personality--
one especially, a rather handsome man of middle age, who gazed at
her observantly and critically with a frank openness which, though
bold, was scarcely rude. She caught the straight light of his keen
blue eyes--and a thrill ran through her whole being, as though she
had been suddenly influenced by a magnetic current--then she
flushed deeply as she fancied she saw him smile. For the first
time in her life she found pleasure in the fact that a man had