As the Don finished speaking, the music sounded the preliminary notes of a quadrille, and he hastened to find a partner. Among the guests were Mr. and Mrs. Arlington, whose minds were of such opposite characters as to keep them continually quarreling. He was a wealthy banker of austere manners and Puritanic tastes, while she was a butterfly of fashion, fit only to be petted, kissed, and caressed. She was all gayety and life; he, all piety and gloom. Her pleasures he considered sinful, while his recreations were to her the most painfully melancholy observances that could be devised. While he believed that she was a child of wrath, a creature of the world, the flesh, and the devil, she was equally satisfied that he was on the highway to fanaticism and hypocrisy. Under these circumstances, it was not unnatural that she should seek her friends among those who mingled in fashionable society, nor that her husband should consider it necessary to follow her into the gay world in order to keep a watch upon her. Her most attentive cavalier was a young bachelor named Harry Bertram, who seemed infatuated with her. Indeed, their preference for each other's society was so marked that the tongue of scandal had already begun to wag, although no overt act could be cited against them. The Don, on leaving Lesparre, chanced to meet Mrs. Arlington, and she readily accorded him the pleasure of dancing with her. In the same set were Daniel McCarthy and Donna Lucia, Charles Sylvanus and Madame Sevier, and Mr. Mather and Mrs. Simon. In the adjoining set were Mr. Benson and Miss Jennie Humphrey, Alexander McIntyre and Mrs. Kerr, Harry Bertram and Mrs. Sanders, and Judge Robert Morgan and Mrs. Middleton.