So Bob stayed, distrait, uneasy. Presently, little Sue, who had heard nothing, came to him, looking very pretty in her fluttering ribbons and flower-trimmed skirts. "I am going into town to-morrow--shopping," she said slyly. "Yes," said Bob, distrait, uncomfortable, for he saw Patsey Warrener whispering to the dowager and looking at him. "Shopping," repeated Sue, "all day, but--" Bob was not even looking at her: he was looking at the two women. "Is it your set next?" asked the little girl, filling up. "Yes, I believe so," said Bob, trying to get back. "No it ain't: I won't! I won't! There! I'm going to dance with Cousin Lind. I ain't going to dance with you no more--never! There!" And she whirled off, pettish, provoked, leaving the poor little fellow in his nervous state, lost in a sort of half-conscious misery. He had not the courage to seek her out and try to appease her: he took his hat and left without a word. But little Sue was to pay dearly for her innocent little burst of temper. Two gentlemen behind her were commenting on our friend Major Johnstone: "What makes the major wabble so? I saw him dancing a while ago as light as the pen-feathers of a gander." "Don't you know?" asked the other. "There was a row in the dressing-room between Short-stop Nettles and Bully Mason; and it always makes old Johnstone limp on that wounded leg to scent a duel." They laughed and passed on, but poor little Sue, bred in the theory of the right of personal redress, felt her heart stop. That was what had made her lover so absent! What would she give to recall her words and manner--the last words she might ever have to say to him? But it was too late: he was gone. After the party she said to the dowager, "Aunty, will there be any more trouble between Cousin Lind and Mr. Nettles?" "There must not be," said the dowager: "I shall send for your cousin in the morning." "In the morning?" hesitated little Sue. "What has made you so wise?" asked the dame, seizing her niece with those bold questioning eyes. "You have never kissed a brother, put a rose in his buttonhole, and had him brought back to you stark and cold, with the rosebud unwithered. But you are right. I shall send for him at once." Though Sue believed, yet all that night the strange fancy possessed her of seeing her playmate lover laid out in the room below, with the withering immortelles faintly scenting the awful dusk about his still cold face. Bob Nettles's reception of the challenge by the hand of Wylde Payne was rather informal. He was just roused in the attic over the counting-house, and said after reading, "I can't promise not to visit in my employer's house if he asks me, but I'm mighty sorry." "I'm afraid that will not do," said Payne coldly, "but you might give up your situation." "Me give up my place?" said Bob, touched on the business edge. "If that's your biz, you'd better trot." "Your friend will find me there," said Payne coldly, laying down his card and going.