s a very mischievous
coquette, and has learned a hundred tricks and _agaceries_ of which my
little friend of seven or eight knew nothing. I grant you were not a
quarter so charming, but you were, I am afraid--more true."

Geraldine was ready to cry, but she was in a passion, nevertheless; such
a hot and short-lived passion as all women of any spirit can go into on
occasion, when they are unjustly suspected.

"If you choose to think so of me you may," she said, with immeasurable
hauteur, sweeping away from him, her mauve ribbons fluttering
disdainfully. "I, for one, shall not try to undeceive you."

The next night we all went up to a ball at the Vanes', to drink Rhenish,
eat ices, quiz the women, flirt with the pretty ones in corners, lounge
against doorways, criticise the feet in the waltzing as they passed us,
and do, in fact, anything but what we went to do--dance,--according to
our custom in such scenes.

The Swan and her Cygnets looked very stunning; they "made up well," as
ladies say when they cannot deny that another is good-looking, but
qualify your admiration by an assurance that she is shockingly plain in
the morning, and owes all to her milliner and maids. Geraldine, who, by
the greatest stretch of scepticism, could not be supposed "made up," was
bewitching, with her sunshiny enjoyment of everything, and her untiring
waltzing, going for all the world like a spinning-top, only a top tires,
and she did not. Belle, who made a principle of never dancing except
under extreme coercion by a very pretty hostess, could not resist her,
and Tom Gower, and Little Nell, and all the rest, not to mention half
Norfolk, crowded round her; all except Fairlie, who leaned against the
doorway, seeming to talk to her father or the members, or anybody near,
but watching the young lady for all that, who flirted not a little,
having in her mind the scene in the paddock of yesterday, and wishing,
perhaps, to show him that if he did not admire her more than when she
was eight, other men had better taste.

She managed to come near him towards the end of the evening, sending
Belle to get her an ice.

"Well," she said, with a comical _pitie d'elle-meme_, "do you dislike me
so much that you don't mean to dance with me at all? Not a single waltz
all night?"

"What time have you had to give me?" said Fairlie, coldly. "You have
been surrounded all the evening."

"Of course I have. I am not so disagreeable to other gentlemen as I am
t