Beth ventured, breaking a long silence.

"Well, don't go and tell everybody," he rejoined. "They'll think you
want to make yourself interesting, and it's nothing to boast about.
Just lay yourself out to be agreeable to people who will further your
husband's interests, for once."

"But am I not always agreeable?" Beth exclaimed, much mortified.

"It doesn't appear so," he answered drily. "At any rate, you don't
seem to go down here."

"How do you mean?" Beth asked.

"Why, the ladies in the place all seem to shun you, for some reason or
other; not one of them ever comes near you in a friendly way."

"They were all very nice to me the other day at Beg," Beth protested,
her heart sinking at this recurrence of the old reproach; for to be
shunned, or in any way set apart, seemed even more dreadful to her now
than it had done when she was a child.

"See that they keep it up then," he answered grimly.

"If it depends upon me, they will," said Beth, setting her sensitive
mouth in a hard determined line that added ten years to her age and
did not improve her beauty. And it was with a sad heart, and sorely
dissatisfied with herself, that she drove to her first ball.

When they entered the ball-room, however, and Dan beamed about him on
every one in his "thoroughly good fellow" way, her spirits rose. The
decorations, the handsome uniforms, the brilliant dresses and jewels,
the flowers and foliage plants, and, above all, the bright dance-music
and festive faces, delighted her, and she gazed about her with lips
just parted in a little smile, wondering to find it all so gay.

A young military man was brought up to her and introduced by one of
the stewards before she had been five minutes in the room. He asked
for the pleasure of a dance; but, alas! thanks to the scheme of
education at the Royal Service School for Officers' Daughters having
been designed by the authorities to fit the girls for the next world
only, Beth could not dance. She had had some lessons at Miss
Blackburne's, but not enough to give her confidence, so she was
obliged to decline. Another and another would-be partner, and some
quite important people, as Dan said, offered, but in vain; and he
looked furious.

"Well," he exclaimed, "this is nice for me!"

"I am sorry," Beth answered nervously. She was beginning to have a
painful conviction that a man had to depend almost entirely on his
wife for his success in life, and the responsibility made her quail.