nd averted eyes, that denoted how much less efficient an
auxiliary he would prove since she had come into the room. "My mother
has mislaid the old visiting-list, and the new one only goes down to
T: so that the U's, and the V's, and W's will be all left out. Think
how we shall be hated in London next week! To be sure it's what my
mother calls 'small and early' like young potatoes, and I hear there
are three hundred cards sent out already."

"You'll only hinder us, Mr. Stanmore," said Maud. "Hadn't you better
go away again?" but observing Dick's face fall, the smiling eyes
added, plainly as words could speak, "if you _can_!" She looked pale
though, and unhappy, he thought. Of course he felt fonder of her than
ever.

"Hinder you!" he repeated. "Why, I'm the mainstay of the whole
performance. Don't I bring you eight-and-twenty dancing men? all at
once if you wish it, in a body, like soldiers."

"Nonsense, my dear," interrupted Aunt Agatha. "The staircase will be
crowded enough as it is."

Maud laughed.

"But are they _real_ dancing men?" she asked, "not 'dummies,'
'duffers,'--what do you call them? people who only stand against the
wall and look idiotic. They're no use unless they work regularly
through, as if it was a match or a boat-race. I don't call it dancing
to hover about, and be always wanting to go down to tea or supper, and
to haunt one and look cross if one behaves with common propriety--like
some people I know."

Dick accepted the imputation.

"_I'm_ not a dancing man," said he, "though my eight-and-twenty
friends are. I cannot see the pleasure of being hustled about in a hot
room with a girl I never saw before in my life, and never want to see
again,--who is looking beyond me all the time, watching the door for
another fellow who never comes."

"Then why on earth do you go?" asked Miss Bruce simply.

"_You_ know why," he answered in a low voice, without raising his eyes
to her face.

"O! I dare say," replied Maud; but though it was couched in a tone of
banter, the smile that accompanied this pertinent remark seemed to
afford Dick unbounded satisfaction.

Mrs. Stanmore looked up from her writing-table.

"I can't get on while you two are jabbering in that corner." (She had
not heard a word either of them said.) "I'll take my visiting-list
up-stairs. You can put these cards in envelopes and direct them. It
will help me a little, but you're neither of you much use."

She gathered her materials to