y; and until Thorpe questioned me it had
not occurred to my mind that there was anything to do at the party but to
speak to Georgy if possible, or, failing that bliss, to watch her from a
distance. Harry laughed at me, and discussed the beauties of the ball with
Thorpe, who was fastidious and considered few girls handsome--in fact, was
so minute in his criticisms that Jack, always more than chivalrous in his
thoughts of women, left us, and with his hands crossed behind him looked
at the pictures on the walls of an inner room quite deserted now. The
conversation turned on Miss Lenox at once, and Thorpe said he was amazed
to find the girl so capable of achieving an easy success and bearing it so
well. "Where," he pursued with his graceful air, "did she learn those
enchanting prettinesses, those wonderful little caprices of manner? Could
they have been acquired in the genteel dreariness of Belfield?"

"I should like to know," rejoined Harry with disdain, "if she has not
been practising them for twenty years? She flirted with Jack and Floyd
here when they used to buy her a penny's worth of peppermint, before they
were out of petticoats themselves. I dare say she made eyes at old Lenox
when he rocked her in the cradle."

"And she is going to marry Holt? I suppose she makes the sacrifice on
account of his money. He takes it quietly and doesn't mind her flirting.
Is he cold, insensible, or has he such complete belief in her regard for
him?"

Harry laughed: "Jack is too good himself not to believe in the goodness of
others. It is just as well. Nobody sees the Devil but those who have faith
in the Devil. I dare say she'll make him as good a wife as he wants: her
aspirations are all for wealth, and her extravagance will be her chief
fault."

Thorpe shrugged his shoulders. "She will have several faults," said he
with a cynical air. "But I can forgive them all in so pretty a woman, and
admire her immensely as another man's wife."

Harry declared he saw nothing particular about the girl except her beauty,
and a more unscrupulous resolve to make the most of it and its effect upon
men than other young women had the nerve to adhere to. "But look there!"
he cried: "see old Applegate" (one of our professors) "simpering over her
bouquet and smiling into her eyes. Wretched old mummy! what does he want
to go to parties for?" For we all held the ingenuous opinion that anybody,
man or woman, ten years or more older than ourselves, ought t