Shortly afterwards, she met Lucian at a cinderella, or dancing-party concluding at midnight. He came at eleven, and, as usual, gravely asked whether he might have the pleasure of dancing with her. This form of address he never varied. To his surprise, she made some difficulty about granting the favor, and eventually offered him “the second extra.” He bowed. Before he could resume a vertical position a young man came up, remarked that he thought this was his turn, and bore Alice away. Lucian smiled indulgently, thinking that though Alice’s manners were wonderfully good, considering her antecedents, yet she occasionally betrayed a lower tone than that which he sought to exemplify in his own person. “I wish you would learn to reverse,” said Alice unexpectedly to him, when they had gone round the room twice to the strains of the second extra. “I DO reverse,” he said, taken aback, and a little indignant. “Everybody does--that way.” This silenced him for a moment. Then he said, slowly, “Perhaps I am rather out of practice. I am not sure that reversing is quite desirable. Many people consider it bad form.” When they stopped--Alice was always willing to rest during a waltz with Lucian--he asked her whether she had heard from Lydia. “You always ask me that,” she replied. “Lydia never writes except when she has something particular to say, and then only a few lines.” “Precisely. But she might have had something particular to say since we last met.” “She hasn’t had,” said Alice, provoked by an almost arch smile from him. “She will be glad to hear that I have at last succeeded in recovering possession of the Warren Lodge from its undesirable tenants.” “I thought they went long ago,” said Alice, indifferently. “The men have not been there for a month or more. The difficulty was to get them to remove their property. However, we are rid of them now. The only relic of their occupation is a Bible with half the pages torn out, and the rest scrawled with records of bets, recipes for sudorific and other medicines, and a mass of unintelligible memoranda. One inscription, in faded ink, runs, ‘To Robert Mellish, from his affectionate mother, with her sincere hope that he may ever walk in the ways of this book.’ I am afraid that hope was not fulfilled.” “How wicked of him to tear a Bible!” said Alice, seriously. Then she laughed, and added, “I know I shouldn’t; but I can’t help it.” “The incident strikes me rather as being pathetic,” said Lucian, who liked to show that he was not deficient in sensibility. “One can picture the innocent faith of the poor woman in her boy’s future, and so forth.” “Inscriptions in books are like inscriptions on tombstones,” said Alice, disparagingly. “They don’t mean much.” “I am glad that these men have no further excuse for going to Wiltstoken. It was certainly most unfortunate that Lydia should have made the acquaintance of one of them.”