"No!" said Mell, emphatic and indignant. "_Never!_ And _you_ shouldn't now, if I could help myself! Do go away! I tell you I'm not used to such as this!" She was almost ready to cry. The whole thing was immensely amusing and entertaining to Rube, and while he laughed, he could also understand how it might come hard on a girl, at first, to feel the bloom despoiled on her chaste lips. "But you will get used to it after awhile," he assured her, with a quiet smile. "My word for it, you will! I will see to it that you do. There now, my pretty one (just what Jerome called her) sweet, frightened bird, why ruffle your beautiful plumage against these bars? They are made of adamant; but only be quiet and take to them kindly and they will not derange a single feather. You are exquisitely lovely to-night! You will intoxicate all beholders! And have you been thinking of that blissful time when we are going to get married?" She had, of course; but what made him so impatient? Couldn't he wait until she got back home? Rube could, certainly; but only on conditions, and those conditions would come very hard on a girl not used to a lover's kiss, and who objected to a lover's fondling, unless she managed well. Fortunately, Mell could manage well. She could have managed the diversified attractions of a dime museum if necessary. "And before he shall desecrate my lips again," Mell vowed to herself, under her breath, "I will perish by my own hands!" Ah! Mell, Mell, you should have thought of that before you sold yourself! At daylight she crawled upstairs and into bed. The ball had been a great success and she its reigning belle. Women like her, with such a form, with such a face, with such glory of hair and wealth of high spirits and physical exuberance, work like a spell in a ball-room. There was something bewildering in the gleam of her eye; something intoxicating in the turn of her neck, the flow of her garments. She had danced, to please Rube, more than once with Jerome. It was while the two were floating together in that delirious rapture of conscious nearness, to which the conventional waltz gives pretext and the stamp of propriety, and while their senses swayed to the rhythmic measure of the sweetest music they had ever heard, that Mell looked up meltingly into her partner's face--a face absorbed, excited, yet darkly set with a certain sternness which Mell fully understood--looked up and said to him: "Only wait until I get back home." Simple words indeed, and holding little meaning for those who heard; but they gave a new lease of life to Jerome. He answered back in a whisper, certain words. And now it only remained for Clara Rutland to accept the Honorable Archibald Pendergast and the happiness of two loving hearts would be assured.