pper stage, and the
waltzes had grown faster. A set of lancers had been danced with so much
spirit and enjoyment that it had been encored. Some of the men were
talking and laughing just a little loudly, and the women's faces were
flushed with the one glass of champagne which is generally all they
permit themselves, the spell of the music, and the excitement of rapid
and rhythmical movement. Couples found their way into the anterooms and
recesses, or sat very close together in corners of the great, broad
staircase.

Some of the men had boldly deserted the ballroom and retreated to the
smoking room, where they could play whist and drink and smoke: "Must
wait for my womenfolk, you know."

Dick, at this, his first dance, was enjoying himself amazingly. He had
gone steadily through the program, and as steadily through most of the
dishes at supper, and he was now flirting, with all a boy's ardor, with
a plump little girl, the niece of Lady Maltby.

She was "just out," and Dick had danced three dances in succession with
her before she remembered that she was committing a breach of etiquette.

"Dance again with you? Oh, I couldn't!" she said, when Dick, with inward
tremors but an outward boldness, begged for the fourth. "I mustn't--I
really mustn't!"

"Why not?" demanded Dick innocently.

"If you weren't such a boy you wouldn't ask," she retorted severely, but
with a smile lurking in her bright young eyes.

"I bet I'm as old as you are," he said.

"Are you? I don't think you are. You look as if you'd just come from
school. I'm----No, I won't tell you. It was just a trick to learn my
age. But if you must know why I won't dance again with you, it is
because no lady ought to dance three times in succession with a man."

"But I'm only a boy, which makes all the difference, don't you see?"
said Dick naively. "Nobody cares what a boy does, you know. Come along."

She pretended to eye him severely.

"No; I won't 'come along.' And I think it's very rude of you not to take
an answer."

"All right," he said cheerfully. "Then will you come and have some
supper?"

"Why, it isn't half an hour ago since we had some."

"Then come and see me eat some more," he suggested.

"Thank you; but I am never very fond of seeing animals fed, even at the
Zoo!"

"That was rather good," he said, with a grin. "My sister, Nell couldn't
have put that one in more neatly."

"Your sister Nell? That's the girl over there, dancing with Captain