‘Oh, Larry! that do make me feel so happy,’ she whispered. As she spoke, the party from Mavis Farm entered the barn and were received with a shout of welcome. Mr Murray, a fine, hale old gentleman, and his sons came first; then Miss Rosa, looking rather conscious, tripping after her brothers in a white muslin dress. The farmer advanced to the beer barrel, and having filled his glass, drank success to all present, and asked them to give three cheers for a bountiful harvest. When that ceremony was completed the fiddlers struck up a merry country dance, and every one was at liberty to drink and caper about. The young people from Mavis Farm all took part in the first dance, and Rosa Murray came up and asked Larry if he would be her partner on the occasion. She ought in fairness to have opened the ball with her father’s bailiff or one of the upper servants, but she preferred the young groom, with whom she held daily intercourse, and she was accustomed to go her own way without reference to anybody’s feelings. As she approached the cousins she gave Lizzie a kindly welcome. ‘I am so glad you have come up, Lizzie; and now your cousin must get you a nice seat until this dance is ended, for I intend him to open the ball with me.’ This was considered a great honour on the part of the villagers, and the blind girl coloured with pleasure to think that her _fiancé_ had been selected for the ceremony. ‘Oh, Miss Rosa, you _are_ good! Larry, why don’t you thank the young lady, and say how proud you shall be to dance alongside of her?’ But Larry said nothing. He reddened, it is true, but more from confusion than pleasure, and he was so long a time settling Lizzie to his satisfaction, that Rosa was disposed to be angry at his dilatoriness, and called out to him sharply that if he were not ready she should open the ball with some one else. Then he ran and took his place by her side, and went through the evolutions of ‘down the middle’ and ‘setting at the corners’ with a burning face and a fast-beating heart. Poor Laurence Barnes! His young mistress’s constant presence in the stables and familiarity with himself had been too much for his susceptible nature. She was to him, in the pride of her youthful loveliness and the passport it afforded her for smiling upon all classes of men, as an angel, rather than a woman, something set too high above for him ever to reach, but yet with the power to thrill his veins and make his hot blood run faster. The touch of her ungloved hand in the figures of the dance made him tremble, and the glance of her eyes sickened him, so that as soon as the terrible ordeal was concluded he made her an awkward salute, and rushed from her side to that of the beer barrel, to drown his excitement in drink. And it was just there that he had left Lizzie Locke.