nd--a
pitiful spectacle, for the lawyer must be pushed through the dance as he
were a doll, with monstrous ungracefulness, and no sense of the time of
the music, his thin legs quarrelling with each other, his neighbours
all confused by his inexpert gyrations, and yet himself with a smirk of
satisfaction on his sweating countenance.

"Madame is not happy," thought Count Victor, watching the lady who was
compelled to be a partner in these ungainly gambols.

And indeed Mrs. Petullo was far from happy, if her face betrayed her
real feelings, as she shared the ignominy of the false position into
which Petullo had compelled her. When the dance was ended she did not
take her husband's proffered arm, but walked before him to her seat,
utterly ignoring his pathetic courtesies.

This little domestic comedy only engaged Count Victor for a moment; he
felt vexed for a woman in a position for which there seemed no remedy,
and he sought distraction from his uneasy feeling by passing every man
in the room under review, and guessing which of them, if any, could
be the Drim-darroch who had brought him there from France. It was a
baffling task. For many were there with faces wholly inscrutable who
might very well have among them the secret he cherished, and yet nothing
about them to advertise the scamp who had figured so effectively
in other scenes than these. The Duke, their chief, moved now among
them--suave, graceful, affectionate, his lady on his arm, sometimes
squeezing her hand, a very boy in love!

"That's a grand picture of matrimonial felicity, Count," said a voice at
Count Victor's ear, and he turned to find the Chamberlain beside him.

"Positively it makes me half envious, monsieur," said Count Victor.
"A following influenced by the old feudal affections and wellnigh
worshipping; health and wealth, ambitions gratified, a name that has
sounded in camp and Court, yet a heart that has stayed at home; the
fever of youth abated, and wedded to a beautiful woman who does not
weary one, _pardieu!_ his Grace has nothing more in this world to wish
for."

"Ay! he has most that's needed to make it a very comfortable world.
Providence is good--"

"But sometimes grudging--"

"But sometimes grudging, as you say; yet MacCailen has got everything.
When I see him and her there so content I'm wondering at my own wasted
years of bachelordom. As sure as you're there, I think the sooner I draw
in at a fire and play my flageolet to the guid