the lady, with a slightly coquettish laugh; "you have
made him as much a woman-hater as yourself. I offered to take him in
our party, and he ran away to you." She paused, and giving him a furtive
critical glance said, with an easy mingling of confidence and audacity,
"Why don't YOU go? Nobody'll hurt you."

"I'm not so sure of that," replied Mr. Ford gallantly. "There's the
melancholy example of Rupert always before me."

Mrs. Tripp tossed her chignon and descended a step of the stairs. "You'd
better go," she continued, looking up over the balusters. "You can look
on if you can't dance."

Now Mr. Ford COULD dance, and it so chanced, rather well, too. With this
consciousness he remained standing in half indignant hesitation on the
landing as she disappeared. Why shouldn't he go? It was true, he had
half tacitly acquiesced in the reserve with which he had been treated,
and had never mingled socially in the gatherings of either sex at Indian
Spring--but that was no reason. He could at least dress himself, walk to
the Court-house and--look on.

Any black coat and white shirt was sufficiently de rigueur for Indian
Spring. Mr. Ford added the superfluous elegance of a forgotten white
waistcoat. When he reached the sidewalk it was only nine o'clock, but
the windows of the Court-house were already flaring like a stranded
steamer on the barren bank where it had struck. On the way thither he
was once or twice tempted to change his mind, and hesitated even at the
very door. But the fear that his hesitation would be noticed by the
few loungers before it, and the fact that some of them were already
hesitating through bashfulness, determined him to enter.

The clerks' office and judges' chambers on the lower floor had been
invaded by wraps, shawls, and refreshments, but the dancing was
reserved for the upper floor or courtroom, still unfinished. Flags,
laurel-wreaths, and appropriate floral inscriptions hid its bare walls;
but the coat of arms of the State, already placed over the judges' dais
with its illimitable golden sunset, its triumphant goddess, and its
implacable grizzly, seemed figuratively to typify the occasion better
than the inscriptions. The room was close and crowded. The flickering
candles in tin sconces against the walls, or depending in rude
chandeliers of barrel-hoops from the ceiling, lit up the most astounding
diversity of female costume the master had ever seen. Gowns of bygone
fashions, creased and stained