the cotillon, which was to be the chief feature of a small and early entertainment.

"But, first of all, don't you want me to present you to Miss Dallison?"

"I think I do," Gretton answered, smiling. "That is, if Miss Dallison is the girl in black."

Sol nodded.

what I told you.

"Ah, you couldn't mistake her after Well?"

"Well, I am bound to admit that what you told me was no exaggeration. She seems to be a good deal surrounded, though; she won't care to be bothered with a humble nobody like me, I'm afraid."

"My dear sir, her character is just as lovely as her face; I never knew her put on airs with anybody, as most of your English women do when they get a little extra attention. Come right along with me and judge for yourself."

Presently Mr. Gretton was making his best bow to Miss Dallison, who turned away from the trim-bearded French dandies by whom she was being besieged to smile very graciously upon the stranger. She had a bewitching smile and a singularly soft, musical voice.

"Mr. Wharton has been telling me," said she, "that he knew you at Oxford. I once spent a day at Oxford, and I have been longing to go back there ever since. You can't imagine how one longs for English places and English faces when one is a permanent exile."

She spoke with apparent sincerity, and her eyes scrutinised with apparent pleasure the typically English face which towered some four or five inches above her

Cuthbert Gretton, indeed, if not strictly handsome, was an extremely nice-looking young man, with closecut brown hair, a clear, healthy skin, a pair of honest grey eyes and white, regular teeth. He was obviously a gentleman; he had been, and still was, an athlete;

D

his whole aspect, contrasting markedly, as it did, with that of the other men who composed the company, was suggestive of a whiff of fresh air in a heavily scented atmosphere. He asked, in accents involuntarily compassionate

"Are you a permanent exile?"

"Oh yes," she answered; "we live abroad because we can't afford to live at home." Then, after a short pause, she laughed and said, "You are looking at my gloves. You are quite right; I wear black gloves because I can't afford to wear white ones."

"Is she," mused the young man, "going to marry Sol Wharton because she can't afford not to marry him? It seems an awful pity!"

But it was not, he remembered, in order to make such reflections as this that he had been honoured with an introduction to Miss Dallison, and he was neglecting the immediate, ostensible object of an introduction effected under the circumstances.

"I suppose," said he diffidently, "it isn't much use to ask if you have a dance left for me?"

"The next one, if you like," was her unexpected reply. “I have adopted the plan of never engaging myself in advance. That system, you see, leaves the door open to agreeable surprises."

"It is I who am agreeably surprised," Cuthbert declared.

"Perhaps that was what I meant," she demurely returned, thereby causing her partner's cheeks to become suffused by an ingenuous blush.

He was not, truth to tell, a very finished or efficient partner, and although she herself danced so superbly that nobody could go wrong with her, he was fain, after a couple of turns, to offer her the apology which seemed to be her due.

"I'm an awful duffer at this sort of thing," he owned. She did not contradict him; but, " All nice men are," she returned. "At least, all nice Englishmen are, and no men are half as nice as Englishmen. Suppose we sit out the rest of the dance and talk?"

She could talk as well as she danced, he found, and she had the additional merit-to which he was less consciously, if not less pleasantly, alive-of listening as well as she talked. She appeared to be, and possibly was, much interested in hearing the short and simple annals of his life; her interest was increased, or she said it was, by the circumstance of his being an orphan, and still more so when he mentioned that his home, so far as he could be said to have a home, was with his uncle in Yorkshire.

"Yorkshire is a very large county, of course," she remarked; "but I wonder whether by any chance you know the Ferrands, who are Yorkshire people."

"Oh dear, yes," he answered; "Lannowe is only a few miles from my uncle's place. I can't say that I am particularly well acquainted with them myself. I used sometimes to meet Lord Lannowe out hunting when I was a boy, and a very good old fellow he was. I didn't care quite so much about her ladyship, who was a rather high and mighty person and who took very little notice of the squirearchy. But she is dead now, and the place has been let for some years, and all the daughters are married."

"Not all," corrected Miss Dallison; "my little friend Monica remains, and is upon the point of being installed as the lady of the house in her father's establishment, I believe. It isn't easy to imagine her in such a position, poor child; but she will have to adapt herself to it somehow."

"Oh, the youngest girl? Yes, I remember now

hearing that she was being educated in a convent abroad. So she is a friend of yours, is she?"

"A convent friend. The finishing touches were put to my own education in the same establishment." "Are you a Roman Catholic, then ?"

"No; but heretics are not refused as pupils there, and I fancy that they have always a kind of hope of making conversions in that way."

"Which was disappointed in your case?

"No very vigorous efforts were made in my case; Rome doesn't clamour for pauper recruits. I think Monica doesn't altogether despair of me, though. Perhaps it is partly on that account that she is so anxious for me to go and stay at Lannowe."

"Oh!—and are you going?"

Miss Dallison shook her head. "I doubt it. Lord Lannowe is not very likely to invite me; and even if he did, there would be the expense of the journey and of the clothes which would have to be bought. No; I am afraid there isn't much chance of my going."

She insisted a little more than was necessary upon her poverty, Cuthbert thought. It is not, after all, a crime to be poor, though it is doubtless a misfortune. Not being able at the moment to specify any compensating feature in that misfortune, he only said—

"I do hope you'll manage it."

"Why?" she inquired, with an amused look.

He was prevented from making the very frank reply which was upon the tip of his tongue by the advent of his host, who said—

"I've been trying to find you a partner for the cotillon, Gretton; but it seems that they are all committed already, except Mademoiselle de Villefranche. I haven't made the suggestion to her yet, though she is a charming young lady, and one of the best dancers

here, because I didn't know but you might object to having to talk French to her."

"I should indeed," Cuthbert answered. "My French, I am sorry to say, is of a most elementary order."

"Added to which," interposed Miss Dallison, "Mr. Gretton has secured a partner without your help." She pointed smilingly to herself, and went on, "Mademoiselle de Villefranche is clearly marked out for you, who speak the purest Parisian French. Besides, she takes precedence of us all in point of rank, so it wouldn't look well for you to dance with anybody else."

"I am an American citizen," protested the discomfited Sol, "and we're living under a Republican form of government here. I'm not supposed to know that there is any difference of rank amongst my mother's guests. I thought you had promised me

"I thought," she interrupted, "you knew that I never promise to dance with anybody until the last moment. As for ignoring differences of rank, you can't do that after establishing yourself in the rue de Varennes, dressing your servants in old-fashioned liveries and marrying your sister to the Prince de Pontbrisé. Your mother would never have forgiven you if you had led the cotillon with such a mere nobody as I am, and what is worse is that she would never have forgiven me either. You ought to thank me, instead of scowling at me."

Poor Sol had not scowled, he had only looked deeply reproachful. But his countenance lightened up a little at Miss Dallison's last words, which were in truth not ill chosen as a means towards restoring him to good humour. Very likely he thought her a clever, far-seeing girl, and very likely she deserved his unspoken encomium. He resigned himself to her will with a shrug of his shoulders, and, as soon as he was out of hearing, she said