ne, and only John and I and the twinkling stars
remained to laugh together! Why does he stay away?"

"O my darling Nellie Gray, they have taken you away," wept the fiddles,
and "Who? who? who-who-who?" inquired the basses in deep solicitude.

Well, the first dance would soon come, now; the second would shortly
follow, and then he and Fannie could go out on the veranda and settle
all doubts. With certainty established in that quarter, whether it
should bring rapture or despair, he hoped to command the magnanimity to
hold over a terrified victim the lash of retribution, and then to
pronounce upon him, untouched, at last, the sentence of exile. He spoke
aloud, and looking up quickly to see if anyone had heard, beheld his
image in a mirror. He knew it instantly, both by its frown and by the
trick of clapping one hand on the front of the thigh with the arm
twisted so as to show a large seal-ring bought by himself with money
that should have purchased underclothes for his father. He jerked it
away with a growl of self-scorn, and went to mingle with older men, to
whom, he fancied, the world meant more than young women and old scores.

He stopped in a part of the room where two Northerners were laughing at
a keen skirmish of words between Garnet and Halliday. These two had
gotten upon politics, and others were drawing near, full of eager but
unplayful smiles.

"Never mind," said Garnet, in retort, "we've restored public credit and
cut the rottenness out of our government."

The Northerners nodded approvingly, and the crowd packed close.

"Garnet," replied the general, with that superior smile which Garnet so
hated, "States, like apples--and like men--have two sorts of rottenness.
One begins at the surface and shows from the start; the other starts
from the core, and doesn't show till the whole thing is rotten."

For some secret reason, Garnet reddened fiercely for an instant, and
then, with a forced laugh, addressed his words to one of the guests.

Another of the strangers was interested in the severe attention a
strong-eyed Rosemont boy seemed to give to Halliday's speech. But it was
only John March, who was saying, in his heart:

"She's got a perfect right to take me or throw me, but she's no right to
do both!"

Only the Northerners enjoyed Halliday. The Suez men turned away in
disdain.

The music struck a quadrille, sweetly whining and hooting twice over
before starting into doubtful history,

"In eighteen hund