Mr. Foss was seen approaching, and Mrs. Hawthorne smiled and sparkled in anticipation of the jokes they would exchange on her fairy weight and his youthful limberness. Gerald sent his eyes around the room to see if any one were free whom it would be a sort of duty to ask to dance. He did not look for pleasure from dancing, the less so that Charlie Hunt, on the perpetual jump, and dancing with a perfection almost unmanly, had brought the exercise into temporary discredit with him. Miss Madison was dancing, Miss Seymour was dancing, Leslie was dancing, Brenda--his eyes were unable to find. In a doorway, and not quite as festive in looks as the majority, which gave to the room the effect of an animated flower-bed, he perceived a figure in snuff-brown silk, just in front of which, soberly watching the dancers, was a little girl in a short dress of embroidered white, a blue hair-ribbon and blue enamel locket. At once dropping his search for a partner, Gerald went to join this pair, thinking, as he approached, that Lily without her spectacles was beginning to have a look of Brenda,--a Brenda with less beauty, but more originality; more--what could one call it?--geniality, perhaps. "Oh, Gerald!"--the little girl caught his hand without ceasing for more than a second to watch the ball-room floor,--"I have promised to go home willingly at ten o'clock!" It was spoken in a gentle wail. "My child," said Fräulein, "you must begin to prepare, for I fear it cannot be far from ten." "Oh, Fräulein, don't keep talking about it! _Please!_" "When you leave this pleasure, Lili, remember, there will be still that other pleasure of the long ride home in the night and the moonlight." "Yes." Lily, glad again, turned wholly to Gerald, the music having stopped. "Mrs. Hawthorne told mother that if she would let me come I should be taken home in her own carriage, with all the furs around us and a hot water-box for our feet, so that we never could catch cold. Wasn't it sweet of her? And we've both already had ices and cakes, before anybody else, because she said we must. Don't you think she's sweet, Gerald?" "Sweet as honey," he said. "Oh, Gerald,"--Lily's tone was fairly lamentable,--"have you seen the baskets of favors that are going to be given away by and by? There are roses of red silk, and lilies of white velvet, and chocolate cigars, and fans, and bonbonnières, and silver bangles! Then funny ones of little monkeys and ducks and things. And I have to go home willingly, cheerfully, promptly, at ten o'clock!" "Lily, if any lady is so good and so misguided as to honor me with a favor, I will bring it to you in my pocket to-morrow or soon after, I promise." "What hour is it, Herr Fane?" asked Fräulein over Lily's head. Gerald drew out his watch and hesitated, sincerely sorry. "To be exact, it is three minutes and three quarters to ten," he said.