People looked, and some smiled--and then couple after couple paused in the dance to gaze on the strangers who had just taken the floor--and soon they had it all to themselves, and on they whirled like mad ones. Harry could not stand it--he left the room. Presently some of his young friends followed him, who seemed excessively amused, and one of them exclaimed, "Harry, where on earth did you pick up those extraordinary waltzers. Mrs. Castleton tells me they are friends of yours?" Harry muttered something, and said, "Hardwicks should not ask any woman to waltz. He did not know how; no man should, if he could not waltz himself." "Are you dancing, Francis?" asked another, of a fashionable looking young man standing near. "No," he replied, languidly, "I am exhausted. I danced with Harry's fair friend the last dance, and it requires no small degree of physical power to keep pace with her efforts." Harry was excessively annoyed. He heartily wished he had never seen her; and was quite angry with Mrs. Castleton for having invited her. And just then, irritated and cross as he was, Mrs. Castleton met him with, "Harry, Miss Dawson says you have carried off her bouquet." "I have not got her bouquet," he answered, angrily. "Well, go and make your own apology," and before he had time to know what she was about, she had her arm in his, and had taken him up to Miss Dawson, saying, "Here is the culprit, Miss Dawson--but he pleads not guilty;" whereupon the young lady tapped him with her fan, and declared he was a "sad fellow," and shook her curls back, and looked up in his face, and flirted, as she thought, bewitchingly, while he with pleasure could have boxed her ears. "Your carriage is at the door," Mrs. Castlelon heard him say soon after. "Why, Harry!" exclaimed his sister, looking almost shocked at his evident desire to hurry away her guest. "You surely don't think of going yet. Miss Dawson?" said she, in her most persuasive manner. "You will dance this polka." A polka! Harry was in despair. He would have preferred dancing on hot ploughshares himself. "The scheme works to admiration," said Mrs. Castleton to Emma, as they met for a moment in the crowd. "But it has spoiled your party," replied the other. "Not at all," she answered, laughing, "what it has withdrawn in elegance, it has made up in spirit. The joke seems to take wonderfully." But Emma did not like such "jokes." Mrs. Castleton's _hauteur_ was of a more flexible kind. To spoil a match she was willing to spoil her party. "Was I right?" she said to Tom, toward the close of the evening. He nodded and laughed, and said, "I congratulate you." Harry had in vain attempted to persuade Miss Dawson that she was heated and tired, and had better not polka; but the young lady thought him over-careful, and chose to dance. "A willful thing!" muttered Harry, as he turned off. "Trifles show the temper--preserve me from an unamiable woman."