loner sitting near us, and he never let me address a word to
her."

Nan began to feel she had had enough of it. She started up hastily as
Lady Fitzroy said the last words, but the entrance of some more young
people compelled her to stand inside a moment, and she heard Mr.
Mayne's answer distinctly: "Well, not an heiress exactly; but the girl
I have in view for him has a pretty little sum of money, and the
connection is all that could be wished; she is nice-looking, too, and
is a bright, talking little body----" But here Nan made such a
resolute effort to pass, that the rest of the sentence was lost upon
her.

Dick, who was strolling up and down the lawn rather discontentedly,
hurried up to her as she came out.

"They are playing a valse; come, Nan," he said, holding out his hand
to her with his usual eagerness; but she shook her head.

"I cannot dance; I am too tired: there are others you ought to ask."
She spoke a little ungraciously, and Dick's face wore a look of
dismay, as she walked away from him with quick even footsteps.

Tired! Nan tired! he had never heard of such a thing. What had put her
out? The sweet brightness had died out of her eyes, and her cheeks
were flaming. Should he follow her and have it out with her, there and
then? But, as he hesitated, young Hamilton came over the grass and
linked his arm in his.

"Come and introduce me to that girl in blue gauze, or whatever you
call that flimsy manufacture. Come along, there's a good fellow," he
said, coaxingly; and Dick's opportunity was lost.

But he was wrong; for once in her life Nan was tired; the poor girl
felt a sudden quenching of her bright elasticity that amounted to
absolute fatigue.

She had spoken to Dick sharply; but that was to get rid of him and to
recall him to a sense of his duty. Not for worlds would she be seen
dancing with him, or even talking to him, again!

She sat down on a stump of a tree in the shrubbery, and wondered
wearily what had taken it out of her so much. And then she recalled,
sentence by sentence, everything that had passed in the conservatory.

She had found out quite lately that Mr. Mayne did not approve of her
intimacy with Dick. His manner had somewhat changed to her, and
several times he had spoken to her in a carping, fault-finding
way,--little cut-and-dried sentences of elderly wisdom that she had
not understood at the time.

She had not pleased him of late, somehow, and all her little efforts
and over