e told him this it might have put to flight the doubts troubling
Mark so much, and making him wonder if Dr. Grant had really a claim upon
the girl stealing his heart so fast.

"I mean to sound her," he thought, and as just then Lieutenant Bob
passed by, making some jocose remark about his offending all the fair
ones by the course he was taking, Mark said to Helen, who suggested
returning to the parlor:

"As you like, though it cannot matter; a person known to be engaged is
above Bob Reynolds' jokes."

Quick as thought the hot blood stained Helen's face and neck, for Mark
had made a most egregious blunder, giving her only the impression that
he was the engaged one referred to, not herself, and for a moment she
forgot the gay scene around her in the sharpness of the pang with which
she recognized all that Mark Ray was to her.

"It was kind in him to warn me. I wish it had been sooner," she thought,
and then with a bitter feeling of shame she wondered how much he had
guessed of her real feelings, and who the betrothed one was. "Not Juno
Cameron," she hoped, as after a few moments Mrs. Cameron came up, and
adroitly detaching Mark from her side, took his place while he sauntered
to a group of ladies and was ere long dancing merrily with Juno, whose
crimson robe once brushed against Helen's pink, and whose black eyes
looked exultingly into Helen's face.

"They are a well-matched pair," Mrs. Cameron said, assuming a very
confidential manner toward Helen, who assented to the remark, while the
lady continued: "There is but one thing wrong about Mark Ray. He is a
most unscrupulous flirt, pleased with every new face, and this of course
annoys Juno."

"Are they engaged?" came faintly and involuntarily from Helen's lips,
while Mrs. Cameron's foot beat the carpet with a very becoming
hesitancy, as she replied: "Oh, that was settled in our family a long
time ago. Wilford and Mark have always been like brothers."

If Helen had been on the watch for equivocations she would not have
placed as much stress as she did on Mrs. Cameron's words, for that lady
did not say positively "They are engaged." She could not quite bring
herself to a deliberate falsehood, which, if detected, would reflect
upon her character as a lady, but she could mislead Helen, and she did
so effectually, as was evinced by the red spot which burned on her
cheeks, and by her uncertain way of replying to a gentleman who stood by
her for a moment, addressing to he