She was seated on a tiny sofa surrounded by a band of uneasy and enamored youths ranging in age from sixteen to twenty, when Mason caught sight of her pretty, fatigued, but resolutely courteous face, and came instantly to her rescue.  He was very fond of Blanche, and teased and petted her with almost cousinly freedom.  He felt himself a middle-aged man beside her, and admired her sweet face, and gentle unselfishness as unreservedly as he would have done those of a child.  Moving her draperies aside with a kindly, if unceremonious hand, he ensconced himself beside her right willingly and devoted his best energies to her amusement, and that of her small court; lifted the burden of their entertainment from her shoulders with ready tact, and waked the boys up vigorously, causing them to enjoy themselves, and forget that they were young; and lonesome, and foolish.  Kind, thoughtful Berkeley!  No wonder the silly little heart beside him fluttered joyously, and the shy blue eyes were raised to his grave handsome face with full measure of content.

And so the hours sped, golden-footed, silver-footed; and the pipers piped and the men and maidens danced and the elders gossiped, drank champagne, and reveled in the fleshpots, yawning surreptitiously behind fans and handkerchiefs as the evening waned.

Pocahontas, roused from a dream of enjoyment by Roy’s mandate, sped lightly up stairs to the dressing-room, and arrayed herself hastily in her mufflings.  At the stairway Thorne joined her, and as her foot touched the lowest step he took her unresisting hand and raised it to his lips murmuring softly; “A happy New Year to you—­my darling! my queen!”

Then good-night to host and hostess, a swift, impulsive kiss to Blanche, and Berkeley put her into the carriage; Roy tightened the reins and they drove rapidly away in the chill gray of the January dawn.  The ball was over; the New Year begun.

Thorne, standing by the steps watching the receding carriage, noticed the bouquet of half-faded jasmin blossoms, which had slipped unheeded from the girl’s hand, and lay neglected and forgotten on the frozen ground.  The impulse came to him to raise them tenderly because her hands had touched them, and then the thought of who had given them arose and struck down the impulse.  He set his heel upon them.

For him also, the New Year had begun.

CHAPTER XI.

The day after a ball is always a languid, wearisome period, to be dozed or yawned through, on bed or sofa, in a state of total collapse.  Life for the time is disorganized, disenchanted; there is a feeling of flatness everywhere, the rooms lately brilliant and joyous with light and color; fade out in the chilling glare of day, and appear like “banquet halls deserted,” which each individual “treads alone,” surrounded by an atmosphere of fatigue, ennui and crossness.  In the country the flatness falls with full perfection, for there is seldom the anticipation of more excitement to buoy one up and keep the effervescence of the cup of pleasure up to the proper sparkle.