The giving of a ball such as Skelton designed was in those days an undertaking little short of a crusade in the Middle Ages. A sailing vessel had to be sent to Baltimore for the supper, musicians, decorations, and everything the plantation did not supply; and it might return in one week, and it might return in two weeks, and it might never return at all. Sylvia Shapleigh hypocritically made light of these difficulties, and handsome cards were sent out to the whole county, including the Blairs. By some sort of hocus-pocus, Sylvia and Lewis obtained the privilege of addressing the invitations, so fearful were they of leaving Skelton a loophole of escape. It was done one June morning in the summerhouse on the bridge--Skelton sitting back smiling, while Sylvia and Lewis alternately conspired and squabbled. Skelton had a way of looking at Sylvia that always agitated her, although she thought she gave no sign of it. She had by this time acknowledged to herself that there were only two places in the world for her--the one where Skelton was, and the other where he was not. She had not, with all her native acuteness, the slightest idea what Skelton felt for her. True, he had a manner of paying her small attentions and compliments, insignificant in themselves, but which he invested with a deep and peculiar meaning. On this very morning, as she and Lewis chattered, Skelton sat looking at her with an expression of enjoyment, as if her mere presence and talk gave him exquisite pleasure. It did give him pleasure to see how much he dominated her; it was a royal sort of overbearing, a refined and subtle tyranny, that gratified his secret inordinate pride. Sylvia confided in him that she was to have a new white-lutestring gown, and Mrs. Shapleigh had ordered a turban with a bird of paradise on it for the occasion. Nothing could exceed Sylvia’s interest and delight, except Lewis’s. Bulstrode locked and barred himself in his room when Bridges, the functionary who was to arrange the ball, arrived from Baltimore. Skelton took refuge in the library, which was the one spot in the house upon which Bridges dare not lay his sacrilegious hands. But even the fastidious and scholarly Skelton could not wholly escape the domestic hullabaloo of a ball in the country. Lewis Pryor, at first delighted, soon found that if he showed his nose outside of the library he was pounced upon by Bridges--a saturnine-looking person, who had exchanged the calling of an undertaker for that of a caterer--and sent on an errand of some sort. Lewis, who was not used to this sort of thing, would have promptly resented it, except that it was for the great, the grand, the wonderful ball. Why he should be so anxious about the ball, he did not know; there was nobody to take any notice of him; but still, he wanted it, and Sylvia had promised to dance the first quadrille with him. This invitation was given far in advance, with a view of out-generalling Skelton.