Adrien Leroy

It was the night of the great ball at Lady Merivale's town house. A Blue

Hungarian Band was playing dreamily the waltz of the season, to the

accompaniment of light laughter and gaily tripping feet. The scent of

roses filled the air. Masses of their great pink blooms lurked in every

small nook and corner; while in the centre of the room, half-hidden by

them, a fountain sent its silver spray into the heated air.

If wealth and luxury alone could bring happiness, then surely Eveline

Merivale should have been the most envied woman in the world. A renowned

beauty, a leader of fashion, with every wish and ambition

gratified--save the one which, at present, the chief object of her

life--to enslave and retain, as her exclusive property, Adrien Leroy.

Her husband, the Earl of Merivale, she regarded as a necessary

encumbrance, inevitable to the possession of the famous Merivale

diamonds. His hobby was farming, and he detested Society; though quite

content that his wife should be made queen so long as he was left in

peace with his shorthorns.

Certainly Eveline Merivale was not in love with her husband; but, on the

other hand, neither was she in love with Adrien Leroy. It simply added a

zest to her otherwise monotonous round of amusements to imagine that she

was; and it pleased her vanity to correspond in cypher, through the

medium of the Morning Post, though every member of her set might have

read the flippant messages if put in an open letter. There was a spice

of intrigue, too, in the way in which she planned meetings at their

mutual friends' houses, or beneath the trees of Brierly Park, or at

Richmond.

Not for worlds would her ladyship have risked a scandal. She prized her

position, and loved her diamonds far better than she was ever likely to

love any human being under the sun. Still, it was the fashion to have

one special favourite; and it was a great thing to have conquered the

handsome and popular Adrien Leroy. It was little wonder, therefore,

that, when midnight had struck and still Leroy was absent from her side,

Eveline Merivale beneath the calm conventional smile, was secretly

anxious and inclined to be angry.

She was looking her best to-night; and although she had already been

surfeited with compliments from duke to subaltern, she yet longed to

hear one other voice praise her appearance. There was, indeed, every

reason why Lady Merivale should be lauded as the greatest beauty of her

time, for she carried all before her by the sheer force of her

personality. Dazzlingly fair, with hair of a bronze Titian hue, which

clustered in great waves about her forehead; her eyes of a deep,

lustrous blue, shading almost to violet. To-night she would have borne

off the palm of beauty from any Court in the world, for her dress was a

creation of Paquin, and enhanced to perfection her delicate colouring,

which needed no artificial aids.