tside the fine ballroom--as the
evening progressed--became unpleasantly hot. Dancing was in full swing
and the orchestra had just struck up the first strains of that
inspiriting new dance--the latest importation from Vienna--a dreamy
waltz of which dowagers strongly disapproved, deeming it licentious,
indecent, and certainly ungraceful, but which the young folk delighted
in, and persisted in dancing, defying the mammas and all the
proprieties.

Maurice de St. Genis after the last quadrille had led Crystal away from
the ballroom to a small boudoir adjoining it, where the cool air from
outside fanned the curtains and hangings and stirred the leaves and
petals of a bank of roses that formed a background to a couple of
seats--obviously arranged for the convenience of two persons who desired
quiet conversation well away from prying eyes and ears.

Here Crystal had been sitting with Maurice for the past quarter of an
hour, while from the ballroom close by came as in a dream to her the
gentle lilt of the waltz, and from behind her, a cluster of
sweet-scented crimson roses filled the air with their fragrance. Crystal
didn't feel that she wanted to talk, only to sit here quietly with the
sound of the music in her ears and the scent of roses in her nostrils.
Maurice sat beside her, but he did not hold her hand. He was leaning
forward with his elbows on his knees and he talked much and earnestly,
the while she listened half absently, like one in a dream.

She had often heard, in the olden days in England, her aunt speak of the
strange doings of that Doctor Mesmer in Paris who had even involved
proud Marie Antoinette in an unpleasant scandal with his weird
incantations and wizard-like acts, whereby people--sensible women and
men--were sent at his will into a curious torpor, which was neither
sleep nor yet wakefulness, and which produced a yet more strange sense
of unreality and dreaminess, and visions of things unsubstantial and
unearthly.

And sitting here surrounded with roses and with that languorous lilt in
her ear, Crystal felt as if she too were under the influence of some
unseen Mesmer, who had lulled the activity of her brain into a kind of
wakeful sleep even while her senses remained keenly, vitally on the
alert. She knew, for instance, that Maurice spoke of the coming
struggle, the final fight for King and country. He had been enrolled in
a Nassau regiment, under the command of the Prince of Orange: he
expected to be