ally. "Been looking for you
everywhere. The music has begun; first dance just forming. Gay and
lively quadrille, you know--country ball wouldn't know itself without a
beginning like that. Come; come on."

Nothing can exceed his _bonhomie_. He tucks her hand in the most
delightfully genial, appropriative fashion under his arm, and with a
beaming nod to Mr. Browne (he never forgets to be civil to anybody)
hurries Joyce out of the room, leaving the astute Dicky gazing after him
with mingled feelings in his eye.

"Deuce and all of a smart chap," says Mr. Browne to himself slowly. "But
he'll fall through some day for all that, I shouldn't wonder."

Meantime Mr. Beauclerk is still carrying on a charming recitative.

"_Such a bore!_" he is saying, with heartfelt disgust in his tone. It is
really wonderful how he can _always_ do it. There is never a moment when
he flags. He is for ever up to time as it were, and equal to the
occasion. "I'm afraid you rather misunderstood me just now, when I said
I'd been looking for you--but the fact is, Browne's such an ass, if he
knew we had made an appointment to meet in the library, he'd have brayed
the whole affair to any and every one."

"Was there an appointment?" says Miss Kavanagh, who is feeling a little
unsettled--a little angry with herself perhaps.

"No--no," with a delightful acceptation of her rebuke. "You are right as
ever. I was wrong. But then, you see, it gave me a sort of joy to
believe that our light allusion to a possible happy half-hour before the
turmoil of the dance began might mean something _more_--something----Ah!
well never mind! Men are vain creatures; and after all it would have
been a happy half-hour to me _only_!"

"Would it?" says she with a curious glance at him.

"_You_ know that!" says he, with the full and earnest glance he can turn
on at a second's notice without the slightest injury to heart or mind.

"I don't indeed."

"Oh well, you haven't time to think about it perhaps. I found you very
fully occupied when--at last--I was able to get to the library. Browne
we all know is a very--er--lively companion--if rather wanting in the
higher virtues."

"'_At last_,'" says she quoting his words. She turns suddenly and looks
at him, a world of inquiry in her dark eyes. "I hate pretence," says she
curtly, throwing up her young head with a haughty movement. "You said
you would be in the library at such an hour, and though I did not
_promise_ to meet you