angmoors are making a great fuss about her, and
people say she'll have all their money as well as her own some day--not
to speak of the old aunts in Yorkshire. I shouldn't wonder if the
Tamworths had their eye upon her. They're not really well off."

Falloden gaily declared that he would back his cousin Mary Tamworth to
get anything she wanted. Mrs. Glendower threw him a sudden, sharp look.
Then she was swept into the crowd. A couple of men in brilliant uniform
came by, clearing a space in the centre of the room, and Falloden saw
Lady Alice beckoning.

In another minute or two he and she were in their places, and what the
newspapers who record these things call "a brilliant scene" was in full
tide:--the Prince and Princess dancing with the master and mistress of
the house, and the rest of the quadrille made up of the tallest men and
handsomest women that Lady Tamworth, with a proper respect both to rank
and to looks, had been able to collect.

The six-foot-three Falloden and his fairylike partner were much
observed, and Lady Alice bubbling over with fun and spirits, found her
cousin Douglas, whom in general she disliked, far better company than
usual. As for him, he was only really conscious of one face and form in
the stately dance itself, or in the glittering crowd which was eagerly
looking on. Constance Bledlow, in filmy white, was his _vis-a-vis_. He
saw her quick movement as she perceived him. Then she bowed slightly, he
ceremoniously. Their hands touched at intervals, and not a few of the
spectators noticed these momentary contacts with a thrill of
pleasure--the splendid physique of the young man, the flowerlike grace
of the girl. Once or twice, as they stood together in the centre of the
"chain," a few words would have been possible. But Constance never
spoke, nor did Falloden. He had thought her very pale at first sight.
But her cheek flushed with dancing; and with every minute that passed
she seemed to him more lovely and more remote, like a spirit from
another world, into which he could not pass.

"Isn't she pretty!--Connie Bledlow?" said Lady Alice enthusiastically.
"She's having a great success. Of course other people are much
handsomer, but there's something--"

Yes, there was something!--and something which, like an exquisite
fluttering bird, had just escaped from Douglas Falloden, and would now,
he supposed, forever escape him.

When the quadrille was over he watched her delicate whiteness disappear