then; only, this matter must be settled first. I could
never go through the farce of standing up before you all at Gilbertine's
side, with such a doubt as this in my mind."

"You will see her before then. Insist on a moment's talk. If she
refuses----"

"Hush!" he here put in. "We part now to meet in this same place again at
ten. Do I look fit to enter among the dancers? I see a whole group of
them coming for me."

"You will be in another moment. Approaching matrimony has made you
sober, that's all."

It was some time before I had the opportunity, even if I had the
courage, to look Dorothy in the face. When the moment came she was
flushed with dancing and looked beautiful. Ordinarily she was a little
pale, but not even Gilbertine, with her sumptuous colouring, showed a
warmer cheek than she, as, resting from the waltz, she leaned against
the rose-tinted wall, and let her eyes for the first time rise slowly to
where I stood talking mechanically to my partner.

Gentle eyes they were, made for appeal, and eloquent with a subdued
heart language. But they were held in check by an infinite discretion.
Never have I caught them quite off their guard, and to-night they were
wholly unreadable. Yet she was trembling with something more than the
fervour of the dance, and the little hand which had touched mine in
lingering pressure a few hours before was not quiet for a moment. I
could not see it fluttering in and out of the folds of her
smoke-coloured dress without a sickening wonder if the little purple box
which was the cause of my horror lay somewhere concealed amid the airy
puffs and ruffles that rose and fell so rapidly over her heaving breast.
Could her eye rest on mine, even in this cold and perfunctory manner, if
the drop which could separate us for ever lay concealed over her heart?
She knew that I loved her. From the first hour we met in her aunt's
forbidding parlour in Thirty-sixth Street she had recognised my passion,
however perfectly I had succeeded in concealing it from others.
Inexperienced as she was in those days, she had noted as quickly as any
society belle the effect produced upon me by her chill prettiness and
her air of meek reserve, under which one felt the heart break; and
though she would never openly acknowledge my homage, and frowned down
every attempt on my part at lover-like speech or attention, I was as
sure that she rated my feelings at their real value as that she was the
dearest, yet most inc