"Do you really think so? I am so glad!" she replied, looking up with a sweet flushed face from the sofa, where he had found a charming corner for two. "I was so afraid you would think me very heavy and awkward. I have hardly ever danced except at home with Sydney. Certainly, I have had plenty of that kind of practice." "With Sydney?" he repeated, interrogatively, just as one cross-questions a child. "Your brother, I suppose?" "Oh no; I have no brothers," she answered; and as she said the words, across her hearer's mind there flashed the thought, "A cousin, I'll bet anything. These sweet simple little girls are always spoilt by some odious cousin, or male friend `I have known all my life,' in the background." But "Oh no," she went on; "Sydney is my sister." Captain Chancellor breathed more freely. "She should have been here to-night; but Aunt Penton was not well, and Sydney thought she should not be left alone; and she _would_ make me come. She is so unselfish!" with a tender look in her bright eyes, and a little sigh, as if the remembrance of Sydney's self-sacrifice somewhat marred her own enjoyment. "Your elder sister, is she not?" "Oh no; she is a good deal younger--nearly two years younger." Captain Chancellor's eyebrows went up a little. His companion read his thoughts, though he said nothing. "I think you fancy I am younger than I am," she explained, with a little blush. "I am nearly nineteen. I suppose I seem younger from having been so little in society. This is the very first time I have ever been anywhere without Sydney, and I disliked it so much, I asked Mrs Dalrymple if I might come early with my father, as he was passing here, and stay with her little girls in the school-room till after dinner, so that I might be in the drawing-room when every one came in." Captain Chancellor smiled at her confession; but its frankness made it the more difficult to realise that she was not the mere child he had guessed her. "And that was how you came to be standing out there in the fog, `all forlorn,' then?" he returned. "Do you know you really frightened me? I don't know what I didn't take you for. A Wareshire witch at the least, though I don't know that I was far wrong." (A quick upward glance, and a slightly puzzled expression on the girlish face, here warned him that he was venturing on untried ground.) "But I forgot," he went on hastily, "you don't belong to Wareborough, I think you said." "Oh, yes I do. You misunderstood me a little. I only said I did not know many people here, that is to say personally--I know nearly every one by sight. I have lived here all my life, but my father does not allow us to visit much." "I have no doubt he is wise. In a place like this, the society must be very mixed, to say the least." Miss Laurence looked slightly embarrassed. "It isn't exactly on that account. My father never speaks of Wareborough in that way. I don't like living here much, but," she hesitated.