To one person, however, that ball was a period of the darkest disappointment. While the merriment of the evening was raging to its height poor Boldero's heart was growing colder and colder, and all his pleasant schemes were rapidly melting into air. The course of true love always runs delightfully smooth when one person only is concerned and that person's imagination directs it at his will; but how often rude contact with reality brings all our airy castle-building to the ground! Boldero, in his dreams about Maud, had no doubt judged her charms aright; but he had omitted one important consideration, namely, that he was not the only man in the world, and that other people would be likely to think about her much as he did himself. This melancholy fact was now borne in upon him with a cruel vehemence. Maud seemed to be in the greatest request and to smile with distracting impartiality on all who came about her. 'Why did you not ask me sooner?' she said reproachfully when he came to claim a dance, 'my card has been full for ages. Stop--you shall have one of Mr. Desvoeux's; he does not matter and he has put down his name for several too many. Shall it be the fifteenth?' Maud asked this in the most artless way and seemingly without a suspicion that Boldero could be otherwise than pleased. Alas! how far otherwise than pleased he felt! The fifteenth! and then only a sort of crumb of consolation from Desvoeux's over-ample banquet! How cruel for a man whose heart was beating high with hope, and who had risen to that state of nervous excitement when to propose would have been easier than not! The charmer had come and gone. The next moment Boldero saw her hurrying off with a new partner and laughing just the same joyous, childlike laugh that had been ringing in his ears for weeks. 'What could that idiotic young ensign have said to make her laugh?' How could any one laugh while Boldero found existence rapidly growing into a Sahara around him? What business had Maud to smile so affectionately on each new comer? Then what was this intimacy with Desvoeux which enabled her to treat him so unceremoniously? How came he to be putting down his name for what dances he pleased? Boldero moodily denounced the object of his devotion as a flirt of the purest water and not over-particular in her selection of admirers. As for Desvoeux, could any really nice girl like such a fop as that? Poor Boldero, in the amiable, sensible condition of mind which jealousy provokes, plunged at once into despair, felt too acutely miserable to dance, and resigned himself, a melancholy wall flower, to the contemplation of enjoyment in which fate forbade him to participate.