oud breast of the earl's daughter,
for she did love him, and she knew it--as much as it was in her
lymphatic nature to love at all.

"I will never forgive him--never!" her white teeth clinched. "The
dastard--to play the devoted to me, and then desert me at the first
sight of a madcap on horseback. I will never stoop to say one civil
word to him again."

Lady Louise kept her vow. Sir Everard, penitent and remorseful, strove
to make his peace in vain.

Lord Carteret's daughter listened icily, sent barbed shafts tipped with
poison from her tongue in reply, danced with him once, and steadily
refused to dance again.

Sir Everard gave it up and went in search of Miss Hunsden, and was
accepted by that young lady for a redowa.

"I thought you would have asked me ages ago," said Harrie, with
delicious frankness. "I saw you were a good dancer, and that is more
than I can say for any other gentleman present, except Lord Ernest.
Ah, Lord Ernest can waltz! It is the height of ball-room bliss to be
his partner. But you stayed away to quarrel with Lady Louise, I
suppose?"

"I have not been quarreling with Lady Louise," replied, Sir Everard,
feeling guiltily conscious all the same.

"No? It looked like it, then. She snubs you in the most merciless
manner, and you--oh, what a penitent face you wore the last time you
approached her! I thought she was a great deal too uplifted for
flirting, but what do you call that with George Grosvenor?"

"George Grosvenor is a very old friend. Here is our redowa, Miss
Hunsden. Never mind Lady Louise."

His arm encircled her waist, and away they flew. Sir Everard could
dance as well as Lord Ernest, and quite as many admiring eyes followed
him and the bright little belle of the ball. Mr. Grosvenor pulled his
tawny mustache with inward delight.

"Handsome couple, eh, Carteret?" he said to his host; "it is an evident
case of spoons there. Well, the boy is only two-and-twenty, and at
that age we all lost our heads easily."

Two angry red spots, quite foreign to her usual complexion, burned on
Lady Louise's fair cheeks. She turned abruptly away and left the
gentlemen.

"Little Harrie is pretty enough to excuse an older man losing his
head," Lord Carteret answered; "but it would not suit Lady Kingsland's
book at all. The Hunsden is poorer than a church-mouse, and though of
one of our best old-country families, the pedigree bears no proportion
to my lady's pride. A duke's daug