inning
hypocrite masquerading back there in Mis' Molly's parlor; but the man
would bear watching.

Mis' Molly had come to call her daughter into the house. "Rena," she
said, "Mr. Wain wants ter know if you won't dance just one dance with
him."

"Yas, Rena," pleaded Mary B., who followed Miss Molly out to the
piazza, "jes' one dance. I don't think you're treatin' my comp'ny jes'
right, Cousin Rena."

"You're goin' down there with 'im," added her mother, "an' it 'd be
just as well to be on friendly terms with 'im."

Wain himself had followed the women. "Sho'ly, Miss Rena, you're gwine
ter honah me wid one dance? I'd go 'way f'm dis pa'ty sad at hea't ef
I had n' stood up oncet wid de young lady er de house."

As Rena, weakly persuaded, placed her hand on Wain's arm and entered
the house, a buggy, coming up Front Street, paused a moment at the
corner, and then turning slowly, drove quietly up the nameless
by-street, concealed by the intervening cedars, until it reached a
point from which the occupant could view, through the open front
window, the interior of the parlor.

XXIV

SWING YOUR PARTNERS

Moved by tenderness and thoughts of self-sacrifice, which had occupied
his mind to the momentary exclusion of all else, Tryon had scarcely
noticed, as he approached the house behind the cedars, a strain of
lively music, to which was added, as he drew still nearer, the
accompaniment of other festive sounds. He suddenly awoke, however, to
the fact that these signs of merriment came from the house at which he
had intended to stop;--he had not meant that Rena should pass another
sleepless night of sorrow, or that he should himself endure another
needless hour of suspense.

He drew rein at the corner. Shocked surprise, a nascent anger, a vague
alarm, an insistent curiosity, urged him nearer. Turning the mare into
the side street and keeping close to the fence, he drove ahead in the
shadow of the cedars until he reached a gap through which he could see
into the open door and windows of the brightly lighted hall.

There was evidently a ball in progress. The fiddle was squeaking
merrily so a tune that he remembered well,--it was associated with one
of the most delightful evenings of his life, that of the tournament
ball. A mellow negro voice was calling with a rhyming accompaniment
the figures of a quadrille. Tryon, with parted lips and slowly
hardening heart, leaned forward from the buggy-seat, gripping the r