nt. Sometimes they could not supply her because they were bad
dancers, and one of her partners was indeed so bad that she ruthlessly
suggested, after one turn round the room, that they should sit out. Then
she sat in a room near at hand, irritated by the sound of that glorious
music, and paying very scant attention to the young man's stammered
apologies, his information about his experiences of Paris and the way
that he shot birds in Scotland.

She was to go down to supper with Roddy Seddon, and she was waiting that
experience with some curiosity. If her grandmother were so fond of him,
then he must be a disagreeable young man, and yet his appearance was not
disagreeable.

He looked as though, like Uncle John and Dr. Chris, he were one of the
comfortable people. Dr. Chris, by the way, had not arrived. He had told
her that he might not be able to escape until late hours.

And so, as the evening advanced, her happiness grew; impossible now to
understand that speechlessness at dinner, impossible to find reasons for
that earlier misery. She danced now both with Lord Massiter and with
Lord Crewner, and said exactly what she thought to both of them;
impossible now to imagine anything but that the world was an enchanting,
thrilling place especially invented for the happiness of Miss Rachel
Beaminster.

III

Uncle John had been promised a dance; his moment arrived. He had watched
her during the early part of the evening, and had been afraid that she
was not at all happy.

She was so unlike other girls, and that first miserable hour seemed to
him the most tragic omen of her future career.

"How is she _ever_ to get on if she takes things as badly as this? I
wish I could help her. I know so exactly how she must be feeling."

But imagine him now confronted with a figure that shone with happiness,
with success, with splendour!

She caught his arm--"Come, Uncle John, we won't dance. We'll talk. Up
here--There's no one in this room."

She ran ahead of him, found a corner for them both, and then, pushing
him on to a sofa, twisted round in front of him, turning on her toes,
flashing laughter at him, sitting down at last beside him, and then
kissing him.

"Oh, my dear! I'm so glad," he said. "I thought you were miserable."

"So I was--at first--perfectly wretched. Now it's all
splendid--glorious!"

This was to him an entirely new Rachel. In her movement, her excitement,
her immediate glad acceptance of the life that a