him and Bertha!" Mrs. Petterick
exclaimed. "He's a handsome man, your husband, and a gay one--flirting
about with all the ladies! I wonder you're not jealous!"

"Jealous!" Beth answered, smiling. "Not I, indeed! Jealousy is a want
of faith in one's self."

"Well, my dear, if you always looked as well as you do just now, you
need not want confidence in yourself," Mrs. Petterick observed. "But
what would you do if your husband gave you cause for jealousy?"

"Despise him," Beth answered promptly.

Mrs. Petterick looked as if she could make nothing of this answer.
Then she became uneasy. The music had stopped, but Bertha had not
returned to her. "I must go and look after my daughter," she said,
rising from her comfortable seat with a sigh. "Gels are a nuisance.
You've got to keep your eye on them all the time, or you never know
what they're up to."

Beth stayed where she was, and soon began to feel uncomfortable.
People stared coldly at her as they passed, and she could not help
fancying herself the subject of unpleasant remark because she was
alone. She prayed hard that some one would come and speak to her. Dan
had disappeared. After a time she recognised Sir George Galbraith
among the groups of people at the opposite side of the room. He was
receiving that attention from every one which is so generously
conferred on a man or woman of consequence, whose acquaintance adds to
people's own importance, and to whom it is therefore well to be seen
speaking; but although his manner was courteously attentive he looked
round as if anxious to make his escape, and finally, to Beth's intense
relief, he recognised her, and, leaving the group about him
unceremoniously, came across the room to speak to her.

"Would it be fair to ask you to sit out a dance with me?" he said. "I
do not dance."

"I would rather sit out a dance with you than dance it with any one
else I know here," she answered naively; "but, as it happens, I do not
dance either."

"Indeed! How is that? I should have thought you would like dancing."

"So I should, I am sure, if I could," she replied. "But I can't dance
at all. They would not let me learn dancing at one school where I was,
and I was not long enough at the other to learn properly."

"Now, that is a pity," he said, considering Beth, his professional eye
having been struck by her thinness and languor. "But have some
lessons. Dancing in moderation is capital exercise, and it
exhilarates; and anythin