looking down at the drooping face.
"Aileen--" and there he stopped, and the sentence was never destined to
be finished, for a shadow darkened the moonlight, a figure flitted in
like a spirit, and stood before them--a fairy figure, in a cloud of rosy
drapery, with shimmering, golden curls, and dancing eyes of turquoise
blue.

Aileen Jocyln started back, and away from her companion, with a faint,
surprise cry. Sir Rupert, wondering and annoyed, stood staring; and
still the fairy figure in the rosy gauze stood like a nymph in a stage
tableau, smiling up in their faces, and never speaking. There was a
blank pause of a moment, then Miss Jocyln made one step forward, doubt,
recognition, delight, all in her face at once.

"It is--it is!" she cried, "May Everard!"

"May Everard!" Sir Rupert echoed--"little May!"

"At your service, monsieur. To think you should have forgotten me so
completely in a decade of years. For shame, Sir Rupert Thetford!"

And then she was in Aileen Jocyln's arms, and there was an hiatus filled
up with kisses.

"Oh! what a surprise." Miss Jocyln cried, breathlessly. "Have you
dropped from the skies? I thought you were in France."

May Everard laughed, the mischievous laugh of thirteen years ago, as she
held up her dimpled cheeks, first one and then the other, to Sir Rupert.

"Did you? So I was, but I ran away."

"Ran away! From school?"

"Something very like it. Oh! how stupid it was, and I couldn't endure it
any longer; and I am so filled with knowledge now, that if I held any
more, I should explode; and so when vacation began, and I was permitted
to spend a week with a friend I just took French leave and came home
instead. And so," folding the fairy hands, and nodding her little
ringleted head, "here I am."

"But, good heavens!" cried Sir Rupert, aghast, "you never mean to say,
May, you have come alone."

"All alone," said May, with another nod. "I'm used to it, you know; did
it last vacation. Came across and spent it with Mrs. Weymore. I don't
mind it the least; don't know what sea-sickness is; and oh! didn't some
of the poor wretches suffer! Isn't it fortunate I'm here for the ball?
And, Rupert, good gracious! how you've grown!"

"Thanks. I can't see that you have changed much, Miss Everard. You are
the same curly-haired, saucy fairy I knew thirteen years ago. What does
my lady say to this escapade?"

"Nothing. Eloquent silence best expresses her feelings; and then she
hadn't time t