understood her well enough, and he pressed her against
his heart with the passion that was in him, whose strength he so rarely
let her see. Then he drew her hand through his arm, and led her down the
stairs; and, as I laughed to find to what lengths our cold statesman
could come at last, I thought Lady Clive's thorns would be innocuous,
however well planted.

Earlscourt never danced; nothing but what was calm and stately could
possibly have suited him; but Beatrice did, and waltzed like a Willis,
(though she liked even better than that standing on his arm and talking
with his friends--diplomatic, military, and ministerial--on all sorts of
questions, most of which she could handle nearly as well as they;) and
about the middle of the evening, while she was waltzing with some man or
other who had begged to be introduced to her, Earlscourt left the
ball-room for ten minutes in earnest conversation with one of the French
ministers, who was leaving the next morning. As he came back again, I
asked him where Beatrice was, because Powell, of the Bays, was bothering
my life out to introduce him to her.

"In the ball room, isn't she? She is with Lady Mechlin, of course, if,
the waltz is over."

A familiar voice stopped him.

"She is not in the ball room. Go where you found her the other night,
and see if Caesar's promised wife be above suspicion!"

I could have sworn the voice was Lady Clive's; a pink domino passed us
too fast for detention, but Earlscourt's lips turned white at the subtle
whisper, and he muttered a fierce oath--fiercer from him, because he's
never stirred into fiery expletives. "There is some vile plot against
her. I must sift it to the bottom;" and, pushing past me, he entered the
ball room. Beatrice was not there; and wending his way through the
crowd, he went in through several other apartments leading off to the
right, and involuntarily I followed him, to see what the malicious
whisper of the pink domino had meant. Earlscourt lifted the curtain that
parted the anteroom from the other chamber--lifted it to see Beatrice
Boville, as the pink domino had prophesied, and not alone! With her was
a man, masked, but about Earlscourt's height, and seemingly about his
age, who, as he saw us, let go her hand with a laugh, turned on to a
balcony, which was but a yard or so from the street, and dropped on to
the pave below. Beatrice started and colored, but I thought she must be
the most desperate actress going, for s