d I--will be here to welcome you when you
return."

Something in her manner, in the half-defiant light in her eyes, puzzles
Beauclerk. What has happened to her since they last were together? Not
more than an hour ago she had seemed--er--well. Inwardly he smiles
complacently. But now. Could she? Is it possible? Was there a chance
that----

"Miss Kavanagh," begins he, moving toward her. But she makes short work
of his advance.

"I repent," says she, turning a lovely, smiling face on Dysart. "A while
ago I said I was too tired to dance. I did myself injustice. That
waltz--listen to it"--lifting up an eager finger--"would it not wake an
anchorite from his ascetic dreams? Come. There is time.".

She has sprung to her feet--life is in every movement. She slips her arm
into Dysart's. Not understanding--yet half understanding, moves with
her--his heart on fire for her, his puzzlement rendering him miserable.

Beauclerk, with that doubt of what she really knows full upon him, is
wiser. Without hesitation he offers his arm to Miss Maliphant; and, so
swift is his desire to quit the scene, he passes Dysart and Joyce, the
latter having paused for a moment to recover her fan.

"You see!" says Beauclerk, bending over the heiress, when a turn in the
conservatory has hidden him from the view of those behind. "I told you!"
He says nothing more. It is the veriest whisper, spoken with an
assumption of merriment very well achieved. Yet, if she would have
looked at him, she could have seen that his very lips are white. But as
I have said, Miss Maliphant's mind has not been trained to the higher
courses.

"Yes. One can see!" laughs she happily. "And it is charming, isn't it?
To find two people thoroughly in love with each other now-a-days, is to
believe in that mad old world of romance of which we read. They're very
nice too, both of them. I do like Joyce. She's one in a thousand, and
Mr. Dysart is just suited to her. They are both thorough! There's no
nonsense about them. Now that you have pointed it out to me, I think I
never saw two people so much in love with each other as they."

Providentially, she is looking away from him to where a quadrille is
forming in the ballroom, so that the deadly look of hatred that adorns
his handsome face is unknown to her.

* * * * *

Meantime, Joyce, with that convenient fan recovered, is looking with sad
eyes at Dysart.

"Come; the music will soon cease," says