Beautiful, sparkling, brilliant, she moves through the rooms. A great delight, a joyous excitement, born of her youth, the music, her own success, fills her. She has a smile, a kindly look, for every one. Even Mr. Buscarlet, in the blackest of black clothes and rather indifferent linen, venturing to address her as she goes by him, receives a gracious answer in return. So does Mrs. Buscarlet, who is radiant in pink satin and a bird-of-paradise as a crown. "Ain't she beautiful?" says that substantial matron, with a beaming air of approbation, as though Molly was her bosom friend, addressing the partner of her joys. "Such a lovely-turned jaw! She has quite a look of my sister Mary Anne when a girl. I wish, my dear, she was to be heiress of Herst, instead of that stuck-up girl in yellow." "So do I; so do I," replies Buscarlet, following the movements of Beauty as she glides away, smiling, dimpling on my lord's arm. "And--ahem!"--with a meaning and consequential cough--"perhaps she may. Who knows? There is a certain person who has often a hold of her grandfather's ear! Ahem!" Meantime the band is playing its newest, sweetest strains; the air is heavy with the scent of flowers. The low ripple of conversation and merry laughter rises above everything. The hours are flying all too swiftly. "May I have the pleasure of this waltz with you?" Sir Penthony is saying, bending over Lady Stafford, as she sits in one of the numberless small, dimly-lit apartments that branch off the hall. "Dear Sir Penthony, do you think I will test your good-nature so far? You are kind to a fault, and I will not repay you so poorly as to avail myself of your offer. Fancy condemning you to waste a whole dance on your--wife!" The first of the small hours has long since sounded, and she is a little piqued that not until now has he asked her to dance. Nevertheless, she addresses him with her most charming smile. "I, for my part, should not consider it a dance wasted," replies he, stiffly. "Is he not self-denying?" she says, turning languidly toward Lowry, who, as usual, stands beside her. "You cannot expect me to see it in that light," replies he, politely. "May I hope for this waltz?" Sir Penthony asks again, this time very coldly. "Not this one; perhaps a little later on." "As you please, of course," returns he, as, with a frown and an inward determination never to ask her again, he walks away. In the ball-room he meets Luttrell, evidently on the lookout for a missing partner. "Have you seen Miss Massereene?" he asks instantly. "I am engaged to her, and can see her nowhere." "Try one of those nests for flirtation," replies Stafford, bitterly, turning abruptly away, and pointing toward the room he has just quitted. But Luttrell goes in a contrary direction. Through one conservatory after another, through ball-room, supper-room, tea-room, he searches without success. There is no Molly to be seen anywhere.