leave you. I am engaged for this dance."

So, for the first time, these two part coldly. The old man goes
slowly, moodily, up and down the gravelled path beneath the brilliant
moon, that--

"From her clouded veil soft gliding,
Lifts her silvery lamp on high,"

and thinks of many things in a humor more sad than bitter; while the
young man, with angry brow and lips compressed, goes swiftly onward to
the house.

As he regains the ball-room, the remembrance of the little partner he
has come to claim rushes back upon him pleasantly, and serves to
dissipate the gloomy and somewhat indignant thoughts that have been
oppressing him. But where is she? He looks anxiously around; and,
after five minutes' fruitless search, lo! there are her eyes smiling
out at him from the arms of a gay and (doubtless) gallant plunger.

The next instant she is gone; but he follows her slight form with
eager glance, and at length crosses the room to where she is now
standing with her soldier. As he does so he flings from him all
tormenting thoughts, forgetting--as it is his nature to do--the
possible misery of the future in the certain happiness of the present.

"The next is ours, is it not?" he says; and she smiles at him,
and--can it be?--willingly transfers her hand from the heavy's arm to
his; and then they dance; and presently he takes her down to the
Peytons' carriage and puts her carefully into it, and presses her
hand, I think, ever so slightly, and then drives home, beneath the
silent stars, with an odd sensation at his heart--half pain, half
pleasure--he has never felt before.

CHAPTER XVIII.

"Known mischiefs have their cure, but doubts have none;
And better is despair than friendless hope
Mixed with a killing fear."--MAY.

It is two o'clock on the following day. Horace,--who came down from
town for the ball, and is staying with Dorian,--sauntering leisurely
into the smoking-room at Sartoris, finds Branscombe there, overlooking
some fishing-tackle.

This room is a mingled and hopelessly entangled mass of guns, pipes,
whips, spurs, fishing-rods, and sporting pictures; there are, too, a
few other pictures that might not exactly come under this head, and a
various and most remarkable collection of lounging-chairs.

There is a patriarchal sofa, born to create slumber; and an ancient
arm-chair, stuffed with feathers and dreams of many sleepers. Over the
door stand out the skeleton remains of a horse's head, ble