"Oh no. You were _right_," says Joyce quickly. How good he is after all, and how unjustly she had been thinking of him. So kind, so careful of the feelings of a tiresome old woman. How few men are like him. How few would so far sacrifice themselves. "Ah, you see it like that!" says, Mr. Beauclerk, not triumphantly, but so modestly that the girl's heart goes out to him even more. How _generous_ he is! Not a word of rebuke to her for her vile suspicion of him. "Why you put me into good spirits again," says he laughing gaily. "We must make haste, I fear, if we would save the first dance." "Oh yes--come," says Joyce going quickly forward. Evidently he is going to ask her for the first dance! That _shows_ that he prefers her to---- "I'm so glad you have been able to sympathize with me about my last disappointment," says Beauclerk. "If you hadn't--if you had had even one hard thought of me, I don't know _how_ I should have been able to endure what still lies before me. I am almost raging with anger, but when one's sister is in question----" "You mean?" say Joyce a little faintly. "Oh, you haven't heard. I am so annoyed myself about it, that I fancied everybody knew. You know I hoped that you would have been good enough to give me the first dance, but when Isabel asked me to dance it with that dreadful daughter of Lady Dunscombe's, what _could_ I do, now I ask you?" appealing to her with hands and eyes. "What _could_ I do?" "Obey, of course," says she with an effort, but a successful one. "You must hurry too, if you want to secure Miss Dunscombe." "Ah; what a misfortune it is to be the brother of one's hostess," says he, with a sort of comic despair. His eyes are centred on her face, reading her carefully, and with much secret satisfaction;--rapid as that slight change upon her face had been, he had seen and noted it. "It couldn't possibly be a misfortune to be Lady Baltimore's brother," says she smiling. "On the contrary, you are to be congratulated." "Not just at this moment surely!" "At this or any other moment. Ah!"--as they enter the ballroom. "The room is already fuller than I thought. Engaged, Mr. Blake?" to Lord Blake's eldest son. "No, not for this. Yes, with pleasure." She makes a little charming inclination of her head to Beauclerk, and laying her hand on Mr. Blake's arm, moves away with him to where a set is already forming at the end of the room. It is without enthusiasm she takes her place with Dysart and one of the O'Donovan girls as _vis-a-vis_, and prepares to march, retreat, twist and turn with the best of them. "A dull old game," she is irreverently terming the quadrilles--that massing together of inelegant movements so dear to the bucolic mind--that saving clause for the old maids and the wall-flowers; when a little change of position shows her the double quartette on the right hand side of the magnificent ballroom.