"What is the matter?" he asked, with gentle entreaty, which in him was not inconsistent with a most evident determination to find out. "_I_ am not distressing you, asking you to dance with me, am I?" "Oh, no--it is nothing! Only please _don't_ ask me," she almost sobbed, struggling against the shame that she was bringing on herself, and knowing quite well that she would struggle in vain. He watched her in silence for half a minute--not as Mr. Kingston had watched her, though with even a fiercer attentiveness, and then he said, very quietly, "Why?" But he had already guessed. "Because--because--I have promised not to." "You have promised Mr. Kingston?" Scarlet with pain and mortification, in an agony of embarrassment, she sighed almost inaudibly, "Yes." "Not to dance with me? or merely not to dance waltzes?" "Must I tell you?" she pleaded, looking up with appealing wet eyes into his hard and haughty face. "Not unless you like, Miss Fetherstonhaugh. I think I understand perfectly." "Oh, Mr. Dalrymple, I want to tell you about it, but I cannot. I am saying things already that I ought not to speak of." "I don't think so," he replied quickly, suddenly softening until his voice was almost a caress, and set all her sensitive nerves thrilling like an Æolian harp when a strong wind blows over it. "It is in your nature to be honest, and to tell the truth. You are not afraid to tell the truth to me?" "I would not tell you an untruth," she murmured, looking down; "but the truth--sometimes one must, sometimes one ought--to hide it. And I hoped you would not need to know about this." "Why, how could I help knowing it? Did you think it likely I might by chance forget you were in the ball-room to-night?" What she thought clearly "blazed itself in the heart's colours on her simple face." But she did not lift her eyes or speak. "I am very glad I know," he continued, in a rather stern tone. "If you had done this to me, and never told me why----" "I should have trusted to you to guess that it was not my fault, and to forgive me for it," the girl interposed, looking up at last with a flash in her soft eyes that, as well as her words, told him a great deal more than she had any idea of. "It was really so?" he demanded eagerly. "It was not your own desire to disappoint me so terribly?" "Oh, _no_." "If you had been left to yourself you would have danced with me?" "Yes, of course." "Quite willingly?" "You _know_ I would!" Mr. Dalrymple drew a long breath. It was rather a critical moment. But he was no boy, at the mercy of the wind and waves of his own emotions, and Rachel's evident weakness of self-control was an appeal to his strength that he was not the man to disregard. Still it was wonderful how actively during these last few minutes he had come to hate Mr. Kingston, whom he had never seen. "I suppose," he said presently, "I must not ask the reason for this preposterous proceeding?"