is niece Roberta were dancing a quadrille together. Richard had just
been received by his hosts and had turned from them to look about him,
when his searching eye caught sight of the pair. This was the precise
moment--he always afterward recalled it--when his heart gave its first
great, disconcerting leap at sight of her, such a leap as he had never
known could shake a man to the foundations.

He had never seen precisely this Roberta before; he explained it to
himself in that way. It was a good explanation. Any sane man who saw her
for the first time that night must instantly have fallen under her
spell.

The Christmas party was the event of the year dearest to Roberta's
heart. The planning for it, since she had been old enough to take her
part, had been in her hands; it was she who was responsible for every
detail of decoration. The great attic room, which was a glorious
playroom the rest of the year, was transformed on Christmas into a
fairyland. The results were brought about in much the same way as in
other places of revelry, with lighting and draping and the use of
evergreens and flowers; but somehow one felt that no drawing-room
similarly treated could have been half so charming as the big attic
spaces with their gables.

And the company! At first Richard saw only the pair who danced together
in the quadrille. If he had glanced about him he might have observed
that the gaze of nearly all who were not dancing was centred upon those
two.

Uncle Rufus was the plumpest, jolliest, most altogether delightful
specimen of the country gentleman that Richard had ever seen. His ruddy
face was clean-shaven, his heavy gray hair waved a little with a boyish
effect about his ears. He was carefully dressed in a frock coat of a cut
not so ancient as to be at all odd, and it fitted his broad shoulders
with precision. He wore a white waistcoat and a flowing black tie, which
helped to carry out the impression of his being a boy whose hair had
accidentally turned gray. As he danced he put every possible
embellishment of posture and step into his task, and when he bowed to
Roberta his attitude expressed the deepest reverence, offset only by his
laughing face as he advanced to take her hand.

But as for the girl herself--what was she? A beauty stepping out of a
portrait by one of the masters? She wore her grandmother's ball gown of
rose-coloured brocade, and her hair was arranged in the fashion that
went with it, small curls escap