But Elizabeth put it still more in the interests of her pure and passionate feeling for Anderson.

He must not--he should not--run any risks in loving her! On a certain night early in December, Elizabeth had been dining at one of the great houses of London.

Anderson too had been there.

The dinner party, held in a famous room panelled with full-length Vandycks, had been of the kind that only London can show; since only in England is society at once homogeneous enough and open enough to provide it.

In this house, also, the best traditions of an older regime still prevailed, and its gatherings recalled--not without some conscious effort on the part of the hostess--the days of Holland House, and Lady Palmerston.