’I have refused no gentleman,’ answered Mirelle, looking across the room. He was too stupid to understand the rebuff. He persisted in worrying her. ’Well,’ he said, ’if you won’t stand up with me, you must let me take you to supper.’ She was silent a moment, raised her eyes timidly and entreatingly to John Herring, and said, ’I am already engaged.’ Herring coloured with pleasure and stepped forward to her assistance. ’You must not tease the Countess,’ he said. ’She confesses that she is not strong and able to dance often. She has fixed on the number of dances she will engage in, and more fortunate applicants have forestalled you, and put their names on her card. You have only yourself to blame that you did not press your claim in proper time.’ ’I say,’ observed Sampson, with an ugly smile on his lips, ’Mirelle, don’t you go dancing too often with Trecarrel. Orange won’t like it. When a girl is about to be married to a man, she don’t like to have another girl coquetting with her deary.’ ’Mr. Sampson Trampleasure,’ said Herring, stepping forward, ’this is your father’s house, and I——’ but Mirelle’s hand grasped his arm, and arrested what he was about to say. He looked round. At the same moment a pair of waltzers caught Sampson, and with the shock he was driven into the midst of the whirling circle, when he was struck by another couple, and sent flying at a tangent to the door. Herring looked at Mirelle. She was trembling slightly, and her face was, if possible, whiter than before. Dark shadows formed under her eyes, making them look unusually large and bright. She did not speak, but continued grasping Herring’s arm, unconscious what she was doing; he could feel by the spasmodic contraction of her fingers that she was more agitated than she allowed to appear. He stood patiently at her side, seeing that she was distressed, and supposing that the insolence of young Tramplara was the occasion of her distress. Presently she recovered herself enough to speak. She put her handkerchief to her brow, and then, with feminine address, gave her emotion an excuse that would disguise its real cause. ’He offends me,’ she said; ’I am unaccustomed to this sort of treatment. Some persons when they go among wolves learn to howl. With me it will be a matter of years before I can school myself to endure their bark. I have lived hitherto in a walled garden among lilies and violets and faint sweet roses, and suddenly I am transplanted into a field of cabbages, where some of the plants are mere stumps, and all harbour slugs.’ She paused again. Just then Trecarrel came up. She let go her grasp of Herring’s arm. She had forgotten that she was still holding it. Trecarrel came smiling his sunniest, with his blue eyes full of languor. As he approached she shrank back, and then drew herself up.