Algy is a tall young man, but the waist of his coat is somewhere about the calves of his legs.  It has told upon his spirits; he looks supernaturally grave.

Mr. Parker is differently visited.  He has an apparently unaccountable reluctance to turning his back to me.  I put it down at first to an exaggerated politeness; but, when, at last, in walking away, he unavoidably does it, I no longer wonder at his unwillingness, as his coat-tails decline to meet within half a mile.  His forefathers must have been oddly framed.

“Poor fellows!” says my partner, in a tone of the profoundest compassion, as he puts his arm round me, and prepares to whirl me again into the throng, “how I pity them!  What on earth did they do it for?”

“Oh, I do not know,” I reply; “for fun I suppose!”

But I think that except in the case of Mr. Parker, who really enjoys himself, and goes about making jovial jests at his own expense, and asking everybody whether he is not immensely improved by the loss of his red hair, that there is not much fun in it.

Algy is as sulky and shamefaced as a dog with a tin kettle tied to his tail, and Mr. Musgrave has altogether disappeared.

The evening wears on.  I forget my cheeks, and dance every thing. How I am enjoying myself!  Man after man is brought up to me, and they all seem pleased with me.  At many of the things I say, they laugh heartily, and I do not wonder—­even to myself my speeches sound pleasant.  What a comfort it is that, for once in his life, Roger may be honestly proud of me!  And he is.

It is surely pride, and also something better and pleasanter than pride, that is shining in the smile with which he is watching me from the door-way.  At least, during the first part of the evening he was watching me.

Is not he still?  I look round the room.  No, he is not here! he has disappeared!  By a sudden connection of ideas I turn my eyes in search of the high comb and mantilla.  Neither are they here.  Last time I saw them, they were sitting on the stairs, pathetically observing to their companion how hard it was that one might not feel cool without looking as if one were flirting.

Perhaps they are on the stairs still; perhaps she has gone to bed as she threatened.  Somehow my heart misgives me.  I become rather absent:  my partners grow seldomer merry at my speeches.  Even my feet feel to fly less lightly, and I forget to look at myself in the glass.

Then it strikes me suddenly that I will not dance any more.  The sparkle seems to have gone out of the evening since I missed Roger’s face from the door-way.

I decline an overture on the part of my first friend to trip a measure with me—­we have already tripped several—­and, by the surprise and slight mortification which I read on his face as he turns away, I think I must have done it with some abruptness.

I decline everybody.  I stand in the door-way, whence I can command both the ballroom and the passages.  They are not on the stairs.