She was dressed in chiffon, wore the Spencer pearls, and carried herself with such unconscious charm that more than one who danced with her that night felt a rapping on the door of his heart and heard the voice of love exclaiming “Let me in!”

There was one young man in particular who showed her such attention that the matrons either smiled or frowned at each other.  Even Miss Cordelia and Miss Patty were pleased, although of course they didn’t show it for a moment.  He was a handsome, lazy-looking young rascal when he first appeared on the scene, lounging against the doorway, drawling a little as he talked to his friends—­evidently a lion, bored in advance with the whole proceeding and meaning to slip away as soon as he could.  But when his eye fell on Mary, he stared at her unobserved for nearly a minute and his ennui disappeared into thin air.

“What’s the matter, Wally?” asked one of his friends.

“James,” he solemnly replied, “I’m afraid it’s something serious.  I only hope it’s catching.”  The next minute he was being introduced to Mary and was studying her card.

“Some of these I can’t dance,” she warned him.

“Will you mark them with a tick, please—­those you can’t dance?”

Unsuspectingly she marked them.

“Good!” said he, writing his name against each tick.  “We’ll sit those out.  The next waltz, though, we will dance that.”

“But that’s engaged—­’Chester A. Bradford,’” she read.

“Poor Brad—­didn’t I tell you?” asked Wally.  “He fell downstairs a moment ago and broke his leg.”

That was the beginning of it.

The first dance they sat out Wally said to himself, “I shall kiss her, if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

But he didn’t.

The next dance they sat out he said to himself, “I shall kiss her if I never do another thing as long as I live—­”

But he didn’t.

The last dance they sat out he said to himself, “I shall kiss her if I hang for it.”

He didn’t kiss her, even then, but felt himself tremble a little as he looked in her eyes.  Then it was that the truth began to dawn upon him.  “I’m a gone coon,” he told himself, and dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief ...

“You’ve got him, all right,” said Helen later, going to Mary’s room ostensibly to undress, but really to exchange those confidences without which no party is complete.

“Got who?” asked Mary.  And she a Bachelor of Arts!

“Oh, aren’t you innocent!  Wally Cabot, of course.  Did he kiss you?”

“No, he did not!”

“Of course, if you don’t want to tell—!”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“There isn’t? ...  Oh, well, don’t worry....  There soon will be.”

Helen was right.

From that time forward Mary’s own shadow was hardly less attentive than Master Wally Cabot.  His high-powered roadster was generally doing one of three things.  It was either going to Mary’s, or coming from Mary’s, or taking a needed rest under Mary’s porte cochere.