h me, remember, Miss Merridew."

"Indeed, Sir Harry, I will not promise you that."

"You will not promise? But you _have_ promised."

"_Have_ promised? What do you mean, sir? I think you are forgetting
yourself!" and Miss Sibyl Merridew lifted up her graceful head with a
little air of hauteur that was by no means unbecoming to her piquant
beauty.

But young Sir Harry Willing was not to be put down by this pretty little
provincial,--not he; and so, lifting up _his_ head with an air of
hauteur, he said to Miss Sibyl,--

"I crave Miss Merridew's pardon, but perhaps if she will reflect a
moment she will recall what she said to me yester morning when I begged
her to give me the pleasure of dancing the last minuet with her
to-night."

Waving her great plumy feather fan to and fro, Sibyl looked across it at
her companion, and answered in a little sweetly impertinent tone,--

"But I never reflect."

"So I should judge, madam," retorted the youth, wrathfully; "but
perhaps," he went on, "if Miss Merridew will deign to bestow a glance
upon this"--and the young fellow pulled from his pocket a gold-mounted
card and letter case, out of which he took a tablet upon which was
written: "Met Miss Sibyl Merridew this morning on the mall. She promised
to dance the last minuet with me to-morrow night. Mem. Send roses if
they are to be had in the town!"

Sibyl blushed as she read this. Then lifting the flowers--Sir Harry's
roses--to her face for a moment, she dropped a demure courtesy and said,
with a gleam of fun in her eyes,--

"If Sir Harry finds that it is necessary for _him_ to recall his friends
and engagements by memorandum notes, he certainly cannot expect an
untutored provincial maid, who carries no such orderly appliance about
with her, to charge _her_ mind unaided."

"An untutored provincial maid!" exclaimed Sir Harry, all his wrath
extinguished by her pretty recognition of his flowers and his admiration
of her ready wit,--"an untutored provincial maid! By my faith, Miss
Sibyl, you'd put to shame many a court dame. But, hark, what's that? As
I live, the musicians are tuning up for the minuet." And smilingly he
held out his hand to her.

[Illustration: A very pretty pair]

"A very pretty pair," said more than one of the assembled company, as
the two took their places in the beautifully decorated ball-room; and as
the dance progressed, Mr. Jeffrey Merridew, watching his niece from his
post of observation, said to him