she felt warm, vivacious and attractive, and it seemed perfectly
natural that after that first waltz she had partners for every dance.

Mr. Arnold danced with no one else. When other partners claimed her,
he retired to the doorway, and stood with his arms folded, surveying
the scene with his whimsical, absent-minded smile; but evidently he
regarded it as his right to have each waltz with her.

"My aunt has ordered me to present you to her," he said, when he had at
length led her into a corner for an ice, and a moment's chat. "For
some reason she has evidently taken a great fancy to you at sight, and
she is giving me no peace. She is a very peremptory and badly spoiled
old lady, but it's impossible to resist her. I told her that she might
frighten you to death, and that then you'd blame me."

"You _didn't_!" cried Nancy, horrified.

"Indeed I did. I've had the experience before--and I told her that I'd
be hanged if I assumed the responsibility of surrendering any
unsuspecting person into her clutches without giving them fair warning.
But, seriously, she is a very dear lady,--though an eccentric one--and
she has been saying extremely nice things about you. Besides--she
asked me to tell you that she knew your father, and that _she_ loved
him long before _you_ were born."

Something in his softened, gentle tone went to Nancy's heart. She put
down her ice.

"Will you take me now? I think I know--I mean I've seen your aunt
already."

"She is a very remarkable person. She can be more terrifying--and more
tender, than any woman in the world. Utterly fearless, something of a
tyrant--possibly because she has never been denied anything she wanted
in her life. She simply doesn't accept denials. If she had been a man
she might have been a Pitt, or a Napoleon. As she is, she is a mixture
of Queen Elizabeth--and Queen Victoria."

The amazing individual, described by this brief biographical preface,
who was still enthroned on the coquettish little French couch, and who
was now consuming a pink ice with naive relish, was indeed the old lady
in purple--otherwise, Miss Elizabeth Bancroft, of Lowry House (for some
reason she had always been given this somewhat English style of
designation; possibly because she was the last of her name to be
identified with the magnificent collections for which Lowry House, the
American roof-tree of aristocratic English colonists, had been famous
for more than a hundred years).

As N