“You are not engaged, I hope?” he says anxiously.  It is a kind of wretched comfort to him to be near Florence’s true friend.  If not the rose, she has at least some connection with it.

“I am afraid I am,” Dora responds, raising her limpid eyes to his.  “Naughty man, why did you not come sooner?  I thought you had forgotten me altogether, and so got tired of keeping barren spots upon my card for you.”

“I couldn’t help it—­I was engaged.  A man in his own house has always a bad time of it looking after the impossible people,” says Adrian evasively.

“Poor Florence!  Is she so very impossible?” asks Dora, laughing, but pretending to reproach him.

“I was not speaking of Miss Delmaine,” says Adrian, flushing hotly.  “She is the least impossible person I ever met.  It is a privilege to pass one’s time with her.”

“Yet it is with her you have passed the last hour that you hint has been devoted to bores,” returns Dora quietly.  This is a mere feeler, but she throws it out with such an air of certainty that Sir Adrian is completely deceived, and believes her acquainted with his tete-a-tete with Florence in the dimly lit anteroom.

“Well,” he admits, coloring again, “your cousin was rather upset by the acting, I think, and I just stayed with her until she felt equal to joining us all again.”

“Ah!” exclaims Dora, who now knows all she had wanted to know.

“But you must not tell me you have no dances left for me,” says Adrian gayly.  “Come, let me see your card.”  He looks at it, and finds it indeed full.  “I am an unfortunate,” he adds.

“I think,” says Dora, with the prettiest hesitation, “if you are sure it would not be an unkind thing to do, I could scratch out this name”—­pointing to her partner’s for the coming dance.

“I am not sure at all,” responds Sir Adrian, laughing.  “I am positive it will be awfully unkind of you to deprive any fellow of your society; but be unkind, and scratch him out for my sake.”

He speaks lightly, but her heart beats high with hope.

“For your sake,” she repeats softly drawing her pencil across the name written on her programme and substituting his.

“But you will give me more than this one dance?” queries Adrian.  “Is there nobody else you can condemn to misery out of all that list?”

“You are insatiable,” she returns, blushing, and growing confused.  “But you shall have it all your own way.  Here”—­giving him her card—­“take what waltzes you will.”  She waltzes to perfection, and she knows it.

“Then this, and this, and this,” says Adrian, striking out three names on her card, after which they move away together and mingle with the other dancers.

In the meantime, Florence growing fatigued, or disinclined to dance longer with Dynecourt, stops abruptly near the door of a conservatory, and, leaning against the framework, gazes with listless interest at the busy scene around.