mbled. "What do you want of me?" it
was asking--helplessly--of the distant man; "and can I--dare
I--give it?"

Then her thoughts flew onward to the ball of the evening, for it was the
night of the Marmion ball. No more escape! If she went--and nothing
should prevent her from going--it would be Falloden's evening,
Falloden's chance. She had been perfectly conscious of evading and
thwarting him during the previous week. There had been some girlish
mischief, but more excitement in it. Now, would he take his revenge?

Her heart beat fast. She had never yet danced with him. To-night she
would feel his arm round her in the convention of the waltz. And she
knew that for her it would be no convention; but something either to be
passionately accepted--or impatiently endured.

* * * * *

Oxford went early to the Marmion ball. It was a very popular gathering.
So that before ten o'clock the green quadrangle was crowded with guests
waiting to see other guests come in; while the lights from the Gothic
hall, and the notes of the "Blue Danube," then in its first prime, flung
out their call to youth and sex.

In they thronged--young men and maidens--a gay procession through the
lawns and quadrangles, feeling the world born anew for them, and for
them only, as their fathers and mothers had felt before them.

Falloden and Meyrick, with half a dozen other chosen spirits, met
Constance at the entrance and while Mrs. Hooper and Alice followed,
pleased against their will by the reflected fame which had fallen upon
them also, the young men formed a body-guard round Constance, and
escorted her like a queen to the hall.

Sorell, eagerly waiting, watched her entrance into the beautiful and
spacious room, with its throng of dancers. She came in, radiant, with
that aureole of popular favour floating round her, which has so much to
do with the loveliness of the young. All the world smiled on her; she
smiled in return; and that sarcastic self behind the smile, which Nora's
quick sense was so often conscious of, seemed to have vanished. She
carried, Sorell saw, a glorious bunch of pale roses. Were they
Falloden's gift?

That Douglas Falloden danced with her repeatedly, that they sat out
together through most of the supper-dances, that there was a sheltered
corner in the illuminated quad, beside the Graeco-Roman fountain which an
archaeological warden had given to the college, where, involuntarily, his
troubled