“I kept the flowers you gave me,” he said in a breathless way.

“Oh yes, I remember; mustn’t we forward now?”

“Mr. Morgeson’s very fond of flowers.”

“So he is.  How de do, Miss Ryder.”

Miss Ryder, my vis-a-vis, bowed, looking scornfully at my partner, who was only a clerk, while hers was a law student.  I immediately turned to Mr. Parker with affable smiles, and went into a kind of dumb-show of conversation, which made him warm and uncomfortable.  Mrs. Judge Ryder sailed by on Ben Somers’s arm.

“Put your shoulders down,” she whispered to her daughter, who had poked one very much out of her dress.  “My love,” she spoke aloud, “you mustn’t dance every set.”

“No, ma,” and she passed on, Ben giving a faint cough, for my benefit.  We could not find Alice after the dance was over.  A brass band alternated with the quadrille band, and it played so loudly that we had to talk at the top of our voices to be heard.  Mine soon gave out, and I begged Mr. Parker to bring Helen, for I had not yet seen her.  She was with Dr. White, who had dropped in to see the miserable spectacle.  The air, he said, shaking his finger at me, was already miasmal; it would be infernal by midnight Christians ought not to be there.  “Go home early, Miss.  Your mother never went to a ball, I’ll warrant.”

“We are wiser than our mothers.”

“And wickeder; you will send for me to-morrow.”

“Your Valenciennes lace excruciates the Ryders,” said Helen.  “I was standing near Mrs. Judge Ryder and the girls just now.  ’Did you ever see such an upstart?’ And, ’What an extravagant dress she has on—­it is ridiculous,’ Josephine Ryder said.  When Ben Somers heard this attack on you, he told them that your lace was an heirloom.  Here he is.”  Mr. Parker took her away, and Ben Somers went in pursuit of a seat.  The quadrille was over, I was engaged for the next, and he had not come back.  I saw nothing of him till the country dance before supper.  He was at the foot of the long line, opposite a pretty girl in blue, looking very solemn and stately.  I took off the glove from my hand which wore the new diamond, and held it up, expecting him to look my way soon.  Its flash caught his eyes, as they roamed up and down, and, as I expected, he left his place and came up behind me.

“Where did you get that ring?” wiping his face with his handkerchief.

“Ask Alice.”

“You are politic.”

“Handsome, isn’t it?”

“And valuable; it cost as much as the new horse.”

“Have you made a memorandum of it?”

“Destiny has brilliant spokes in her wheel, hasn’t she?”

“Is that from the Greek tragedies?”

“To your places, gentlemen,” the floor-manager called, and the band struck up the Fisher’s Hornpipe.  At supper, I saw Ben Somers, still with the pretty girl in blue; but he came to my chair and asked me if I did not think she was a pretty toy for a man to play with.