ed, angrily.

"Well, go and make your own apology," and before he had time to know
what she was about, she had her arm in his, and had taken him up to
Miss Dawson, saying,

"Here is the culprit, Miss Dawson--but he pleads not guilty;"
whereupon the young lady tapped him with her fan, and declared he was
a "sad fellow," and shook her curls back, and looked up in his face,
and flirted, as she thought, bewitchingly, while he with pleasure
could have boxed her ears.

"Your carriage is at the door," Mrs. Castlelon heard him say soon
after.

"Why, Harry!" exclaimed his sister, looking almost shocked at his
evident desire to hurry away her guest. "You surely don't think of
going yet. Miss Dawson?" said she, in her most persuasive manner. "You
will dance this polka."

A polka! Harry was in despair. He would have preferred dancing on hot
ploughshares himself.

"The scheme works to admiration," said Mrs. Castleton to Emma, as they
met for a moment in the crowd.

"But it has spoiled your party," replied the other.

"Not at all," she answered, laughing, "what it has withdrawn in
elegance, it has made up in spirit. The joke seems to take
wonderfully."

But Emma did not like such "jokes." Mrs. Castleton's _hauteur_ was of
a more flexible kind. To spoil a match she was willing to spoil her
party.

"Was I right?" she said to Tom, toward the close of the evening.

He nodded and laughed, and said, "I congratulate you."

Harry had in vain attempted to persuade Miss Dawson that she was
heated and tired, and had better not polka; but the young lady thought
him over-careful, and chose to dance.

"A willful thing!" muttered Harry, as he turned off. "Trifles show the
temper--preserve me from an unamiable woman."

Now Miss Dawson was not unamiable, but Harry was cross. If he were
ashamed of her, she was hardly to be expected to know that. At any
rate he walked off and left her to take care of herself. Mr. Hardwicks
took her home as he had brought her--and Harry hardly looked at her
again.

He was thoroughly out of humor. Mrs. Castleton had discretion enough
not to follow up her victory. She saw she was successful, and so left
things to their own course.

Never was a "dissolving view" more perfect. Harry had really imagined
Miss Dawson not only very beautiful, but thought she would grace any
drawing-room in Europe. He now saw her hoydenish, flirty, and
ungraceful, with beauty of a very unrefined style--in fact, a
differen