im near her, and managed to keep him in the best
of spirits all the evening, and more than once Gowan, catching a
glimpse of her as she addressed some simple remark to the favored one,
recognized a certain bright softness in her face which told its own
story. But there would have been little use in openly displaying his
discomfiture; so, after feeling irritated for a moment or so, Ralph
Gowan allowed himself to drift into attendance on Mollie, and, being
almost gratefully received by that young lady, he did not find that the
time passed slowly.

"I am so glad you came here." she said to him, plaintively, when he
first crossed the room to her side. "I do so hate Brown."

"Brown!" he echoed. "Who _is_ Brown, Mollie? and what has Brown been
doing to incur your resentment?"

Mollie gave her shoulders a petulant shrug.

"Brown is that little man in the big coat," she said, "the one who went
away when you came. I wish he would stay away. I can't bear him," with
delightful candor.

"But why?" persisted Gowan, casting a glance at the side of the room
where Dolly stood talking to her lover. "Is it because his coat is so
big, or because he is so little, that he is so objectionable? To be at
once moral and instructive, Mollie, a man is not to be judged by his
coat."

"I know that," returned Mollie, her unconscious innocence asserting
itself; "it is n't that. _You_ couldn't be as disagreeable as he is if
you were dressed in rags."

Gowan turned quickly to look at her, forgetting even Dolly for the
instant,--but she was quite in earnest, and met his questioning eyes
with the most pathetic ignorance of having said anything extraordinary.
Indeed, her faith in what she had said was so patent that he found it
impossible to answer her with a light or jesting speech.

"It is n't that," she went on, pulling at a glossy green leaf on her
bouquet. "If he did n't--if he would n't--if he didn't keep saying
things--"

"What sort of things?" asked Gowan, to help her out of her dilemma.

"I--don't know," was the shy reply. "Stupid things."

"Stupid things!" he repeated. "Poor Brown!" and his eyes wandered to
Dolly again.

But it would not have been natural if he had not been attracted by
Mollie, after all, and in the course of time in a measure consoled
by her. She was so glad to be protected from the advances of the much
despised Brown, that he found it rather pleasant than otherwise to
constitute himself her body-guard,--to talk