She danced very badly. Harry had not been aware of it before; but she jumped up and down--and if the truth must be told, with an air and spirit of enjoyment not just then the fashionable style. "How in earnest your fair friend dances," said a young man, with a smile, to Harry, as they passed in the dance. Harry colored. "Who on earth have you there, Harry?" asked another, with rather a quizzical look. "Introduce me, wont you?" But Harry affected not to hear the request. "Who is the young lady your brother is dancing with, Mrs. Castleton?" he heard asked several times; to which his sister answered in her sweetest and most winning manner, "Miss Dawson--a friend of Harry's;" and to some of her brother's particular friends, he heard her say, "Oh, that's Harry's _belle_. Don't you know Miss Dawson--let me introduce you." Harry felt quite provoked, he did not know why, at hearing his sister couple _him_ always with Miss Dawson; and if he thought the room hot at the beginning of the dance, he did not feel it any cooler before it was over. Mrs. Castleton introduced a gentleman just as the dance finished, who asked her for the next, when Harry said quickly, "You are fatigued, are you not? Perhaps you had better go with me and get an ice." "Do you go and bring Miss Dawson one," said his sister. "I hope," she continued, "you are not fatigued already?" "Oh, no," replied the young lady, with an animation and energy that proclaimed she had a dancing power within not to be readily exhausted. "Oh, no, indeed; I could dance all night." "I am glad to hear it," said Mrs. Castleton, graciously, as if she felt her dancing a personal compliment. And before the dance was over she had introduced half a dozen young men to her. Feeling herself a decided belle, Miss Dawson was in high spirits (that trying test to an unrefined woman.) She considered Mrs. Castleton's visit and invitation as a marked compliment, (as she had every right to do,) and her attentions now, and the admiration she received, excited her to even more than her ordinary animation, which was always, to say the least of it, sufficient. She laughed, and she talked, and shook her long curls about, and flirted in a style that made the ladies look, and the gentlemen smile. Moreover, Mr. Hardwicks, who knew no one else, (for Mrs. Castleton had no idea of forcing _him_ on any of her friends,) never left her side; and the easy manner in which he spoke to her, and took her fan from her hand while she was talking, and even touched her sleeve to call her attention when her head was turned away, all of which she seemed to think quite natural, made Harry color, and bite his lip more than once with mortification and vexation. "You are not going to waltz?" he said, justly distrusting the waltzing of a lady who danced so. "Yes," she said, "with Mr. Hardwicks;" and in a moment they were whirling round in a style quite peculiar, and altogether new to the accomplished waltzers then and there assembled.