Baskerville, quiet, rather sedate, and seeking the middle–aged rather than the young, struck Pelham as one of the pleasantest fellows he had ever met. It looked as if this chance incursion of the Charity Ball would reveal more of the real American life to Pelham and Darrell than they might have met in a month of ordinary traveller’s advantages. Mrs. Luttrell had already engaged them for a couple of dinners and Baskerville for a club breakfast. Most of the people they met were agreeable, and they noticed that buoyancy of spirit and gayety of heart which a great writer on America, and another writer who was the most patronizing literary snob ever seen in North America, mutually agreed to be characteristic of American society. The ball itself, which was described by the society correspondents as of surpassing brilliancy, hardly reached that mark; but to three persons, Elizabeth Brandon, Pelham, and Darrell, it was an evening of delight, never to be forgotten. Meanwhile, James Clavering still stood outside in the sharp, starlit night, listening to the bursts of music which came at intervals from the ball–room and watching the great lighted windows. He saw Elizabeth Brandon float past in Darrell’s arms, and watched them enviously. His exterior showed that the price of a ball–ticket was nothing to him, but he knew that he had no place then in a ball–room. He had taken no part in searching for the trinket which Elizabeth had dropped, but presently, moving a little, he saw under his heel the crushed fragments of pearls. He had unconsciously ground the little heart under his foot. It gave him a spasm of regret and even of sentiment, and he thought to himself, with an odd smile flitting across his well–cut features, “Suppose some day I should give that girl a diamond heart, five times as big and a thousand times as costly as this. It wouldn’t be so strange, after all.” He had stood watching the last stragglers to the ball and searching the windows for a passing glimpse of the beautiful Elizabeth. Meanwhile, outside, General Brandon had returned to the sidewalk. He would have dearly liked to go, himself; but it had been all that he could do to buy a ticket for Elizabeth,—a ticket and seventeen yards of white muslin, which she herself had fashioned with her own fingers into a beautiful gown and had trimmed with her grandmother’s old lace. As General Brandon was moving off, a hand touched his elbow, and James Clavering, who had been standing a little in the background, spoke to him. “This is General Brandon?” he said. “Yes,” replied General Brandon, looking into the clear–cut face of the man before him, who towered a head above him. “And you, I cannot at this moment call your name.” “It’s Clavering. Don’t you remember me when I was a sutler at Fort Worth in Texas, and you were a captain of cavalry at the same post?”