“Dear little Cecil, how well she is looking!” thought he, facilely forgetting his latest flame, and just becoming sensible of her “altered eye.”

“My niece,” said Bertie, in a theatrical tone, intended to disguise his perception of it, “shall we tread a measure?  Let me lead you forth into the mazy dance.”

“Excuse me, Bertie,” said Cecil, languidly; “I am only going to dance the two or three round ones I am engaged for, and I know you do not care for square.”

“I should think not,” said he angrily, “when you are going to dance round ones with other fellows.”

“You see you asked too late,” said she, indifferently.

“Will you go in to supper with me then?”

“That was all arranged and written down ages ago.  Let me see, I am ticketed for the Major again.”

“As you have been all day.  I never saw such a cut and-dried, monotonous programme for a party:  all done by rule—­no freedom of action.”

“Really, Bertie, you and Miss Tremaine can’t complain.”

“That’s why you are so cold to me to-night, Cecil,” said Du Meresq, quietly.

“What can it signify to me?” retorted she, freezingly, vexed at having permitted the adversary, so to speak, to discover the joint in her harness.  Her partner, who had been hovering near, now claimed and bore her unwillingly away, for next to being friends with Bertie was the pleasure of “riling” him by smiling icyness.  It was the only weapon she permitted herself, as she would not condescend to any visible sign of jealousy or pique.

Bertie was simply gene by her determination to be all or nothing; there was no satisfying such an unreasonable girl.  Like the immortal Lilyvick, “he loved them all,” yet her thoughtful mind and gentle companionship were becoming more to him than he was himself aware of.

Cecil, valsing round, looked at each turn for his tall figure leaning against the wall.  It was an abstracted attitude, and he seemed graver than usual.

“Had she made him unhappy?”—­she trusted so—­would give the world to read his thoughts.

Some one said, “There is no punishment equal to a granted prayer.”  Du Meresq was wrapt in speculation as to whether they had really succeeded in getting a wild turkey for supper, which the Mess President was in maddening doubt about the day before.

That blissful moment was at hand, and the room thinned with a celerity born of ennui, I suppose, for very few people are really hungry, yet it is the invariable signal for as simultaneous a rush as of starving paupers when the door of a soup kitchen is opened.  To be sure, there are the chaperones, poor things, round whom no “lovers are sighing,” and, perhaps, supper is the liveliest time to them—­old gentlemen, too, might be allowed some indulgence; but what can be said for dancing men, wasting the precious moments of their partners, while they linger congregated together among the debris and champagne-corks?