so near, and led her mother to a discussion of the dresses they were to wear, which had the air of absorbing all Mab’s thoughts. ‘Do you think I will look very fat in white, mother? and my arms so red and healthy,’ she said. And this sort of conversation was carried on until Mab fairly put her mother, with all her anxieties and questions, to bed. The little girl was not without questions in her own mind, questions about her father, about the life she could not remember, or scarcely could remember, in Paris; about the family and relations she had never seen. By dint of much reflection it appeared to her that she could recollect a stiff gentleman with a fat face, who must have been Lord Portcullis himself. Why was it she knew nothing of her uncle? Why did he take no notice? Was there any reason for it? or was it her mother’s fault? If so, Mab was as strongly determined that she was of her mother’s faction as ever Leo Swinford could be; but more still than Leo Swinford she wanted to know from the beginning, and find out how and why it all was. XXVI The night of the FitzStephens’ dance was a great one in Watcham. It was not precisely a dance, to tell the truth, as, to temper the pretensions belonging to the name of a ball, there was to be a little musical performance to begin with--a duet from Emily and Florry Plowden, a few pieces for violin and piano, and so on--which was sufficient to give something of the air of an impromptu and accidental performance to the dance, which, of course, was the real meaning of the whole. Some of the people were so unkind as not to arrive till the music was over, which was thought exceedingly bad taste by the performers and their families, and gave the General and his wife a moment of dread lest the party they had got up so carefully might not be a success after all. But by ten o’clock the music was over, the piano rolled into its appointed corner, and the music stands, which had been prepared for the violinists, put away. The musicians who were engaged for the dance did not want any music stands, and the assembled party required every scrap of room that was available. The excellent FitzStephens had done wonders to enlarge the space. They had taken away everything--almost the fixtures of the house: doors were unhung, carpets lifted: I cannot really calculate the trouble that had been taken. Even after the party assembled, the removal of the chairs on which they had been seated to hear the music was a matter of labour, for they were not all light chairs like those which people in Watcham borrow by the dozen from Simpkinson of the ‘Blue Boar,’ but included a number of comfortable easy-chairs for the ladies who did not dance, of whom there were a considerable number. The FitzStephens did not see the necessity of leaving the elder people out. They were old themselves, and though they delighted in seeing the young ones enjoy themselves, as they said, yet they liked also to have their