When he first caught sight of him, Rupert was waltzing with a lovely little creature who was a Vanuxem and was not unlike the Delia Tom De Willoughby had fallen hopelessly in love with. When he saw his father a flash of scarlet shot over the boy's face, and, passing, left him looking very black and white. His brow drew down into its frown, and he began to dance with less spirit. When the waltz was at an end, he led his partner to her seat and stood a moment silently before her, glancing under his black lashes at the Colonel, who had begun to quote Thomas Moore and was declaiming "The Young May Moon" to a pretty creature with a rather alarmed look in her uplifted eyes. It was the first dance at which she had appeared since she had left school. Suddenly Rupert turned to his partner. He made her a bow; he was a graceful young fellow. "Thank you, Miss Vanuxem. Thank you for the dance. Good-night. I am going home." "Are you?" exclaimed little Miss Vanuxem. "But it is so early, Mr. De Willoughby." "I have stayed just ten minutes too long now," said Rupert. "Thank you again, Miss Vanuxem. Good-night." He walked across the room to Colonel De Willoughby. "I am going home," he said, in a low, fierce voice; "you had better come with me." "No sush thing," answered the Colonel, gaily. "On'y just come. Don't go to roosh with shickens. Just quoting Tom Moore to Miss Baxter. Bes' of all ways to lengthen our days Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear." The little beauty, who had turned with relieved delight to take the arm of a new partner, looked at her poetic admirer apologetically. "Mr. Gaines has come for me, Colonel De Willoughby," she said; "I am engaged to him for this dance." And she slipped away clinging almost tenderly to the arm of her enraptured escort, who felt himself suddenly transformed into something like a hero. "Colonel De Willoughby is so flattering," she said; "and he has such a queer way of paying compliments. I'm almost frightened of him." "I will see that he does not speak to you again," said her partner, with an air of magnificent courage. "He should not have been allowed to come in. You, of course, could not understand, but--the men who are here will protect the ladies who are their guests." Rupert gave his father a long look and turned on his heel. He went home, and the next time the Terpsichorean Society invited him to a dance he declined to go. "Nice fellow I am to go to such places," he said to himself. "Liable to bring a drunken lunatic down upon them at any minute. No, the devil take it all, I'm going to stay at home!" He stayed at home, and gradually dropped out of the young, glowing, innocently frivolous and happy world altogether, and it carried on its festivities perfectly well without him. The selfishness of lovely youth is a guileless, joyous thing, and pathetic inasmuch as maturity realises the undue retribution which befalls it as it learns of life.