remaine can't complain."

"That's why you are so cold to me to-night, Cecil," said Du Meresq,
quietly.

"What can it signify to me?" retorted she, freezingly, vexed at having
permitted the adversary, so to speak, to discover the joint in her
harness. Her partner, who had been hovering near, now claimed and bore
her unwillingly away, for next to being friends with Bertie was the
pleasure of "riling" him by smiling icyness. It was the only weapon she
permitted herself, as she would not condescend to any visible sign of
jealousy or pique.

Bertie was simply _gene_ by her determination to be all or nothing; there
was no satisfying such an unreasonable girl. Like the immortal Lilyvick,
"he loved them all," yet her thoughtful mind and gentle companionship
were becoming more to him than he was himself aware of.

Cecil, valsing round, looked at each turn for his tall figure leaning
against the wall. It was an abstracted attitude, and he seemed graver
than usual.

"Had she made him unhappy?"--she trusted so--would give the world to read
his thoughts.

Some one said, "There is no punishment equal to a granted prayer." Du
Meresq was wrapt in speculation as to whether they had really succeeded
in getting a wild turkey for supper, which the Mess President was in
maddening doubt about the day before.

That blissful moment was at hand, and the room thinned with a celerity
born of _ennui_, I suppose, for very few people are really hungry, yet it
is the invariable signal for as simultaneous a rush as of starving
paupers when the door of a soup kitchen is opened. To be sure, there are
the chaperones, poor things, round whom no "lovers are sighing," and,
perhaps, supper _is_ the liveliest time to them--old gentlemen, too,
might be allowed some indulgence; but what can be said for dancing men,
wasting the precious moments of their partners, while they linger
congregated together among the _debris_ and champagne-corks?

"What a clearance," said Bluebell, subsiding, with a fagged air, on to a
sofa, as her partner bowed himself off with an eye to business.

"Forward the heavy brigade," said Bertie, motioning to his brother-in-law
bearing off Lady Hampshire; "only room for thirty at a time. _We_ must
wait, Miss Leigh."

"I am ready to wait. But what have 'we' got to say to it?" said Bluebell,
with her Canadian directness.

"Don't speak so unkindly," said Bertie, sentimentally, flinging himself
on the sofa by her side. "You don't