“That may well be, for I might be happier.”

Again her eyes met mine, and she hummed an air.  So we came to the gate, beside which stood Diomedes and Hugo in the family claret-red.  A coach was drawn up, and another behind it, and we went down the leafy walk in the midst of a bevy of guests.

We have no such places nowadays, my dears, as was my grandfather’s.  The ground between the street and the brick wall in the rear was a great stretch, as ample in acreage as many a small country-place we have in these times.  The house was on the high land in front, hedged in by old trees, and thence you descended by stately tiers until you came to the level which held the dancers.  Beyond that, and lower still, a lilied pond widened out of the sluggish brook with a cool and rustic spring-house at one end.  The spring-house was thatched, with windows looking out upon the water.  Long after, when I went to France, I was reminded of the shy beauty of this part of my old home by the secluded pond of the Little Trianon.  So was it that King Louis’s Versailles had spread its influence a thousand leagues to our youthful continent.

My grandfather sat in his great chair on the sward beside the fiddlers, his old friends gathering around him, as in former years.

“And this is the miss that hath already broken half the bachelor hearts in town!” said he, gayly.  “What was my prediction, Miss Dolly, when you stepped your first dance at Carvel Hall?”

“Indeed, you do me wrong, Mr. Carvel!”

“And I were a buck, you would not break mine, I warrant, unless it were tit for tat,” said my grandfather; thereby putting me to more confusion than Dolly, who laughed with the rest.

“’Tis well to boast, Mr. Carvel, when we are out of the battle,” cried Mr. Lloyd.

Dolly was carried off immediately, as I expected.  The doctor and Worthington and Fitzhugh were already there, and waiting.  I stood by Mr. Carvel’s chair, receiving the guests, and presently came Mr. Swain and Patty.

“Heigho!” called Mr. Carvel, when he saw her; “here is the young lady that hath my old affections.  You are right welcome, Mr. Swain.  Scipio, another chair!  ’Tis not over the wall any more, Miss Patty, with our flowered India silk.  But I vow I love you best with your etui.”

Patty, too, was carried off, for you may be sure that Will Fotheringay and Singleton were standing on one foot and then the other, waiting for Mr. Carvel to have done.  Next arrived my aunt, in a wide calash and a wider hoop, her stays laced so that she limped, and her hair wonderfully and fearfully arranged by her Frenchman.  Neither she nor Grafton was slow to shower congratulations upon my grandfather and myself.  Mr. Marmaduke went through the ceremony after them.  Dorothy’s mother drew me aside.  As long as I could remember her face had been one that revealed a life’s disappointment.  But to-day I thought it bore a trace of a deeper anxiety.