CHAPTER XXVI.
Mrs.Jordan looked away from her now--looked, she thought, rather injured and, as if trifled with, even a little angry.

The mention of Lady Bradeen had frustrated for a while the convergence of our heroine's thoughts; but with this impression of her old friend's combined impatience and diffidence they began again to whirl round her, and continued it till one of them appeared to dart at her, out of the dance, as if with a sharp peck.

It came to her with a lively shock, with a positive sting, that Mr.Drake was--could it be possible?
With the idea she found herself afresh on the edge of laughter, of a sudden and strange perversity of mirth.

Mr.Drake loomed, in a swift image, before her; such a figure as she had seen in open doorways of houses in Cocker's quarter--majestic, middle-aged, erect, flanked on either side by a footman and taking the name of a visitor.

Mr.Drake then verily _was_ a person who opened the door! Before she had time, however, to recover from the effect of her evocation, she was offered a vision which quite engulfed it.