"Did you hear the meet was at the Four Elms to-morrow, Percival?" "Man, do you know there's every prospect of a fine frost?" "Percival, my sister has a word to say to you about the Philharmonic." "Percival, I'm saying----" He had to stop again and again to respond to their appeals; while, on the other hand, his companion Maxwell shuffled impatiently about, waiting, and grumbled: "Come on, man, never mind,--be done with your civilities. She will have given away every dance before we get near her." Finally, John found himself standing face to face with this strange heroine of his thoughts. He said to himself that, but for her own looks, he might have been shaken in his conviction that it was she. The face that he saw before him, with hair smooth as satin, and crowned with flowers, as was then the fashion, in the midst of the ball was difficult to associate with the ruffled aspect, the flush of excitement, the strange light in the eyes of the woman at the coach door. But she stood straight up to meet him, like one who is strongly set in her own defence, as if she were standing at the bar: and there was in her eyes a watchfulness, a preparedness, as of a man who keeps his arm ready to return a blow. Perhaps all this was merely in John's eyes. Maxwell seemed to see nothing unusual in the look or air of the girl whom he admired. The gay group around fluttered and jested. Nobody within sight or hearing had the slightest suspicion of anything in Marion Wamphrey that was not always there. She did not hold out her hand to him, welcoming the stranger as the other frank and kindly maidens would have done; but that was because Miss Marion was always a little high and mighty, and now and then put on airs, as one who had been out in the world and knew the fashion. "You mustn't think anything of that," Maxwell said afterwards; "it is just her way. I like her to have a way of her own, not like all the rest," said the young man in love. But John Percival was not satisfied that it was her way. She seemed to look at him in the eyes as if trying to cow him--as if on the faintest movement on his part she were ready to strike. And this on his part excited him, and made him anxious to strike. "I think," he said, "that Miss Wamphrey and I have met before----" "I told you so," said Maxwell,--"I told you both so. I was certain you must have met before." If this ass had not broken in with his assurances about a thing he could know nothing whatever about, John felt sure she would have shown more consciousness than she did. As it was, her colour, he was sure, wavered a little; but she said, with a little burst of laughing surprise: "Oh, how condescending of you to remember! I recollect well seeing you, Mr Percival. But it was only seeing you, not meeting; for you were at the grand end of the Assembly Rooms, among all the lady patronesses, and I was only at the foot of the room, and knew nobody."