prepared--puzzles or nettles Mr. Beauclerk there is no way of
learning. He makes no sign.

"I thought I should never be able to get a dance with you; you
see,"--smiling--"when one is the belle of the evening, one grows
difficult. But you _might_ have kept a fifth or sixth for a poor
outsider like me. An old friend too."

"Old friends don't count at a dance, I'm afraid," says she, with a smile
as genial as his own; "though for the matter of that you could have had
the first; _no one_--hard as it may be to make you believe it--had asked
the belle of the evening for that."

This is not quite true. Many had asked for it, Dysart amongst others;
but she had kept it open for--the one who didn't want it. However, fibs
of this sort one blinks at where pretty girls are the criminals. Her
tone is delicately sarcastic. She would willingly suppress the sarcasm
altogether as beneath her, but she is very angry; and when a woman is
angry there is generally somebody to pay.

"Oh! that _first_!" says he, with a gesture of impatience. "I shan't
forgive Isabel in a hurry about that; she ruined my evening--up to
_this_. However," throwing off as it were unpleasant memories by a shake
of his head, "don't let me spoil my one good time by dwelling upon a bad
one. Here I am now, at all events; here is comfort, here is peace. The
hour I have been longing for is mine at last."

"It might have been yours considerably earlier," says Miss Kavanagh with
very noteworthy deliberation, unmoved by his lover-like glances, which
after all have more truth in them than most of his declarations. She
sits playing with her fan, and with a face expressionless as any sphinx.

"Oh! my _dear_ girl!" says Mr. Beauclerk reproachfully, "how can you say
that! You know in one's sister's house one must--eh? And she laid
positive commands on me----"

"To dance the first dance with Miss Maliphant?"

"Now, that's not like you," says Mr. Beauclerk very gently. "It's not
just. When I found Miss Dunscombe engaged for that ridiculous quadrille,
what could I do? _You_ were engaged to Blake. I was looking aimlessly
round me, cursing my luck in that I had not thrown up even my sister's
wishes and secured before it was too late the only girl in the room I
cared to dance with when Isabel came again. 'Not dancing,' says she;
'and there's Miss Maliphant over there, partnerless!'"

He tells all this with as genuine an air as if it was not false from
start to finish.

"You