It was very gay at Schuyler Hill that night, for as the evening advanced the stiffness which had at first characterized the strangers wore away, and those who did not dance joined in the games which were played in an adjoining room, and Miss Rossiter, in her lone chamber, corked her ears with cotton to shut out the noise, which was far more harsh and discordant because it came from what she termed the “_canaille_.” Financially, too, the Sociable was a great success, for after the colonel had added his donation in the shape of a “twenty,” it was found that they had raised seventy dollars, and that the melodeon was sure. Had it not been, the colonel would have paid the balance rather than open his doors again, for the affair was not to his taste, and he was glad when the last guest had said good-night and his house was cleared of them all. He did not like church sociables, and his daughters did not like them, and Mrs. Tiffe did not like them, though there was one comfort, that worthy matron said—“They ate up all the dry cake left from the party,” and she congratulated herself upon having two fresh loaves of sponge left as she locked up her store-room and silver, and retired for the night. Gertie was too much excited to sleep, and long after her return home she sat and talked of the Sociable and what she had seen, and when at last she laid her head upon her pillow it was with the conviction that she never could be as happy again as she had been that night at Schuyler Hill, dancing the Lancers with Godfrey. CHAPTER XXXII. MRS. ROGERS SPEAKS HER MIND. “Hallo, Bob, are you going anywhere in particular?” was Godfrey’s salutation to Robert Macpherson, when the next afternoon he met him at a point in the grounds where two paths diverged. “Just to town for a walk. Are you going anywhere in particular?” was the reply, to which Godfrey responded: “Just away from town for a walk.” And so the two took different roads and sauntered on until, curiously enough, they met again at the gate of Mrs. Rogers’s cottage, where Gertie sat alone upon the porch. “Did you start to come here?” Robert asked, coloring a little, and Godfrey replied: “Yes; did you?” while his face wore a look of annoyance, which was in no wise lessened when ten minutes later Tom Barton also appeared, and seemed to think it a good joke that they had all met there together and so found each other out. “I don’t know what there is to find out,” Godfrey said doggedly, adding, as he rose to his feet with an impatient shake of his pants: “This is most too much of a good thing, and I think I’ll go.” “Please, Mr. Godfrey, don’t,” Gertie said beseechingly, feeling intuitively that hers was rather a novel position, alone with three young men, and that Godfrey was in some way a protection.