Meantime William Bender, having managed to drop Jenny from his arm, had asked Mary to accompany him to a small conservatory, which was separated from the reception rooms by a long and brilliantly lighted gallery.  As they stood together, admiring a rare exotic, William’s manner suddenly changed, and drawing Mary closer to his side, he said distinctly, though hurriedly, “I notice, Mary, that you seem embarrassed in my presence, and I have, therefore, sought this opportunity to assure you that I shall not again distress you by a declaration of love, which, if returned, would now give me more pain than pleasure, for as I told you at Mr. Selden’s, I am changed in more respects than one.  It cost me a bitter struggle to give you up, but reason and judgment finally conquered, and now I can calmly think of you, as some time belonging to another, and with all a brother’s confidence, can tell you that I, too, love another,—­not as once I loved you, for that would be impossible but with a calmer, more rational love.”

All this time Mary had not spoken, though the hand which William had taken in his trembled like an imprisoned bird; but when he came to speak of loving another, she involuntarily raised his hand to her lips, exclaiming, “It’s Jenny, it’s Jenny.”

“You have guessed rightly,” returned William, smiling at the earnestness of her manner.  “It is Jenny, though how such a state of things ever came about, is more than I can tell.”

Mary thought of the old saying, “Love begets love,” but she said nothing, for just then Jenny herself joined them.  Looking first at William, then at Mary, and finally passing her arm around the latter, she whispered, “I know he’s told you, and I’m glad, for somehow I couldn’t tell you myself.”

Wisely thinking that his company could be dispensed with, William walked away, leaving the two girls alone.  In her usual frank way, Jenny rattled on, telling Mary how happy she was, and how funny it seemed to be engaged, and how frightened she was when William asked her to marry him.

Fearing that they might be missed, they at last returned to the parlor, where they found Ella seated at the piano, and playing a very spirited polka.  Henry, who boasted that he “could wind her around his little finger,” had succeeded in coaxing her into good humor, but not at all desiring her company for the rest of the evening, he asked her to play, as the easiest way to be rid of her.  She played unusually well, but when, at the close of the piece, she looked around for commendation, from the one for whose ear alone she had played, she saw him across the room, so wholly engrossed with her sister that he probably did not even know when the sound of the piano ceased.

Poor Ella; it was with the saddest heartache she had ever known that she returned from a party which had promised her so much pleasure, and which had given her so much pain.  Rose, too, was bitterly disappointed.  One by one her old admirers had left her for the society of the “pauper,” as she secretly styled Mary, and more than once during the evening had she heard the “beauty” and “grace” of her rival extolled by those for whose opinion she cared the most; and when, at one o’clock in the morning, she threw herself exhausted upon the sofa, she declared “’twas the last party she’d ever attend.”