The dress was a mixture of grey and black, which would have looked _bizarre_ on anyone else less beautiful; but its strange tints harmonised with her superb and classic class of beauty, and she looked like a vision of loveliness which might well dazzle the eyes of the beholders.
She paused in her progress--it might almost be called a triumphant one, for the other women's looks were eloquent of dismay--and looked at Stafford with the slow, half-dreamy smile which had come into her face of late when she spoke to him.
"Have you seen my father?
Has he come down, Mr.Orme ?" she asked.
"No," said Stafford.

He looked at her, as a man does when he admires a woman's dress, and forgetting Howard's words of warning, said: "What a splendacious frock, Miss Falconer!" "Do you like it?
I am glad," she said.

"I had my doubts, but now--" Her eyes rested on his for a moment, then she passed on.
"I shouldn't like to have to pay Miss Falconer's dress bill," remarked a young married woman, looking after her.

"That 'frock' as you call it, in your masculine ignorance, must have cost a small fortune." Stafford laughed.
"We men always put our foot in it when we talk about a woman's dress," he said.
A moment after, the dinner was announced, and Sir Stephen, who had come down at the last moment, as he went up to take in Lady Clansford, nodded to Stafford, and smiled significantly.

He was as carefully dressed as usual, but on his face, and in his eyes particularly, was an expression of satisfaction and anticipatory triumph which was too obvious to escape the notice of but very few.