asthmatical voice,
"you've brought us some of the Meadshire roses, eh, what? Hope you're
enjoying yourself. If you had come a little earlier, I would have asked
you to dance with me."

"Where have you been so long, Cicely?" asked her mother, but the twinkle
in Lord Meadshire's eyes showed that a joke was in progress, and he
broke in hurriedly, "Forty or fifty years earlier, I mean, my dear," and
he chuckled himself into a fit of coughing.

The Squire was not looking quite pleased, but whatever the cause of his
displeasure it was not, apparently, Cicely's prolonged absence, for he
also asked if she was enjoying herself, and looked at her with some
pride and fondness. Going home in the carriage, she learned later that
Lord Meadshire, who would have done a great deal more to provide her
with social gaiety if he had not been living, now, mostly in retirement
with an invalid wife, had procured those commands which had brought them
up to London, and are not generally bestowed unasked on the belongings
of a country squire, however important he may be in the midst of his own
possessions.

Lord Meadshire stayed with them for some little time and pointed out to
her some of the notabilities and the less familiar royalties. Then Dick
came up and took her away to dance again. After that she sat by her
mother's side until the end. She saw the boy with whom she had made
friends eying her rather wistfully. He had danced a quadrille with a
princess, and the experience seemed so to have shattered his nerve that
he was not equal to making his way to her to ask her to bear him company
again, and she could not very well beckon him, as she felt inclined to
do. The ball became rather dull, although she looked a good deal at the
King and Queen and thought how extraordinary it was that she should be
in the same room with them.

Before she had quite realised that it had begun, the ball was over. The
band played "God save the King" again. Everybody stood up and the royal
procession was formed and went away to supper. With the light of royalty
eclipsed, her own supper seemed an ordinary affair. At country dances
she had shirked it whenever she could, taking advantage of a clearer
floor to dance with some willing partner right through a valse or a
two-step from beginning to end. After supper she danced once or twice,
but as she drove back to the very private hotel at about half-past one,
she only felt as if she had not danced nearly enough, and