And there were to be no interludes of hunger and thirst if the host could help it.  No dull pauses nor recesses, but one continued round, lasting until midnight, at which hour the final banquet in the dining-room was to be served, and the great surprise of the evening reached—­the formal announcement of Harry and Kate’s engagement, followed by the opening of the celebrated bottle of the Jefferson 1800 Monticello Madeira, recorked at our young hero’s birth.

And it goes without saying that there were no interludes.  The fun began at once, a long line of merry talk and laughter following the wake of the procession, led by the host and Kate, the colonel signalling at last to the cotton-batting with the goggle spectacles, who at once struck up a polka and away they all went, Harry and Kate in the lead, the whole room in a whirl.

This over and the dancers out of breath, Goggles announced a quadrille—­the colonel and St. George helping to form the sets.  Then followed the schottische, then another polka until everybody was tired out, and then with one accord the young couples rushed from the hot room, hazy with the dust of lint from the linen crash, and stampeded for the cool wide stairs that led from the great hall.  For while in summer the shadows on some vine-covered porch swallowed the lovers, in winter the stairs were generally the trysting-place—­and the top step the one most sought—­because there was nobody behind to see.  This was the roost for which Kate and Harry scampered, and there they intended to sit until the music struck up again.

“Oh, Kate, you precious darling, how lovely you look!” burst out Harry for the hundredth time when she had nestled down beside him—­“and what a wonderful gown!  I never saw that one before, did I?”

“No—­you never have,” she panted, her breath gone from her dance and the dash for the staircase.  “It’s my dear mother’s dress, and her scarf too.  I had very little done to it—­only the skirt made wider.  Isn’t it soft and rich?  Grandpa used to bring these satins from China.”

“And the pearls—­are they the ones you told me about?” He was adjusting them to her throat as he spoke—­somehow he could not keep his hands from her.

“Yes—­mother’s jewels.  Father got them out of his strong-box for me this morning.  He wanted me to wear them to-night.  He says I can have them all now.  She must have been very beautiful, Harry—­and just think, dear—­she was only a few years older than I am when she died.  Sometimes when I wear her things and get to thinking about her, and remember how young and beautiful she was and how unhappy her life, it seems as if I must be unhappy myself—­somehow as if it were not right to have all this happiness when she had none.”  There was a note of infinite pathos in her voice—­a note one always heard when she spoke of her mother.  Had Harry looked deeper into her eyes he might have found the edges of two tears trembling on their lids.