"Supper!" he exclaimed. "By-the-bye, I forgot. Will you excuse me, Roma, for a moment?" She was only too ready; her hand was withdrawn from his arm almost before the words were out of his mouth. "Never mind about me," she said quickly. "I see Gertrude over there. I can make my way to her quite well alone." She did not know if he heard what she had said or not, in a moment he had disappeared. And, alas! for the vanity of human expectations, Gertrude was no longer to be seen "over there." Nearly every one had by this time left the ball-room; the few who were still in process of filing out were not of Roma's acquaintances. She began to feel rather uncomfortable and deserted, and a little indignant with Beauchamp. One or two couples glanced at her as they passed, with some surprise. "What can Miss Eyrecourt be standing there alone for?" said a girl who knew her by name only, to the gentleman she was with. "Better ask Captain Chancellor," replied the young man. He was the son of one of the managers, formerly head clerk, of the Winsley Bank, and his acquaintance with the "county" was decidedly limited. As might have been expected therefore, his knowledge of its private arrangements was minute in the extreme, now and then indeed suggesting suspicions of clairvoyance. "Who is he?" asked the girl, a stranger to the neighbourhood, to whom five minutes before Mr Thompson had pointed out Miss Eyrecourt, condescendingly, as "one of our belles--has been, that is to say." "He is a sort of a connection of hers," he replied, "that is to say, a brother of Mrs Eyrecourt's. He and she--Captain Chancellor and Miss Eyrecourt, are engaged to be married, though it is not _generally_ known. There he is," he added, lowering his voice, for at that moment, as if in confirmation of his statement, Beauchamp, conspicuous by running against the supper-seeking stream, passed them, on his way back to the ball-room. "Oh, indeed!" replied Miss Smith, with the sex's usual keen interest in such matters. "I am glad you told me. It is such fun to watch engaged people." She communicated the fact in all good faith to her next partner, who happened to be one of the officers in the cavalry regiment stationed in the neighbouring town. This gentleman, not personally acquainted with either of the two people it chiefly concerned, mentioned it again casually as an undoubtedly well-authenticated piece of local news to a brother officer, whose wife, an old school-friend of Mrs Dalrymple's, happened to be writing to that lady the next day. The object of her letter being to ask for an introduction to the family at Winsley Grange, the major's wife naturally alluded to the engagement as a "just announced" occurrence, not forgetting, on the principle of "the three black crows," to add, what she probably really thought she had been told, that "she understood the marriage was to take place almost immediately."