lking to
their kind, and the lady of doubtful character showed every symptom of
confiding her case to him in the near future. Indeed it was made quite
obvious to him that the two or three hours between dinner and bed
contained an amount of unhappiness, which was really pitiable, so many
people had not succeeded in making friends.

It was settled that the dance was to be on Friday, one week after the
engagement, and at dinner Hewet declared himself satisfied.

"They're all coming!" he told Hirst. "Pepper!" he called, seeing William
Pepper slip past in the wake of the soup with a pamphlet beneath his
arm, "We're counting on you to open the ball."

"You will certainly put sleep out of the question," Pepper returned.

"You are to take the floor with Miss Allan," Hewet continued, consulting
a sheet of pencilled notes.

Pepper stopped and began a discourse upon round dances, country dances,
morris dances, and quadrilles, all of which are entirely superior to the
bastard waltz and spurious polka which have ousted them most unjustly
in contemporary popularity--when the waiters gently pushed him on to his
table in the corner.

The dining-room at this moment had a certain fantastic resemblance to a
farmyard scattered with grain on which bright pigeons kept descending.
Almost all the ladies wore dresses which they had not yet displayed, and
their hair rose in waves and scrolls so as to appear like carved wood in
Gothic churches rather than hair. The dinner was shorter and less formal
than usual, even the waiters seeming to be affected with the general
excitement. Ten minutes before the clock struck nine the committee made
a tour through the ballroom. The hall, when emptied of its furniture,
brilliantly lit, adorned with flowers whose scent tinged the air,
presented a wonderful appearance of ethereal gaiety.

"It's like a starlit sky on an absolutely cloudless night," Hewet
murmured, looking about him, at the airy empty room.

"A heavenly floor, anyhow," Evelyn added, taking a run and sliding two
or three feet along.

"What about those curtains?" asked Hirst. The crimson curtains were
drawn across the long windows. "It's a perfect night outside."

"Yes, but curtains inspire confidence," Miss Allan decided. "When the
ball is in full swing it will be time to draw them. We might even open
the windows a little. . . . If we do it now elderly people will imagine
there are draughts."

Her wisdom had come to be recognised, and