If he would only come up from that horrid smoking-room and be good-natured once more and make friends with me! I think I could forgive and forget everything, and look upon the remembrance of this ball with much delight and satisfaction. My slight jealously of Blanche Going has disappeared, and weighs not at all in the scale with my other miseries. Indeed, I have almost forgotten the incident in which she figured. Hark! a distant door bangs. Now surely he is coming. Will He enter my room first, I wonder, to speak to me as he always does? Or will he at once shut himself morosely into his dressing-room? Steps upon the stairs, steps along the corridor. A laugh. "Good-night" from Sir Mark Gore. "Good-night," heartily returned by Marmaduke. Bah! how needlessly I have worried myself! He is not angry at all. If he can jest and talk so easily with the cause of all our dispute, he can certainly entertain no bitter thoughts towards me. I hear Marmaduke cross the inside room and approach mine. I feel confident he is coming to "make it up" with me. I turn my chair so as to face the door and be ready to meet him half-way in the reconciliation; though--lest he may think me too eager--I find it my duty to let a gently aggrieved shadow fall upon my face. The door opens, and he comes in, walks deliberately to my dressing-table, lights a candle, and then, without so much as a glance at the fireplace, where I sit, prepares to return to his room. "Marmaduke!" I cry, in dismay, springing to my feet. He stops and regards me coldly. "Do you want me? Can I do anything for you?" "'Duke! how can you be so unkind, so unforgiving, so--so cruel to me?" I exclaim, going a little nearer, a suspicion of tears in my voice, large visible drops in my eyes. "Are you going away without saying one word to me?" "What _have_ I to say? You have left me nothing. When last we spoke I asked you to do a very simple thing to please me, and you refused." "I know. But afterwards I was sorry. I--you must have seen--I did not mean to vex you." "I saw nothing. The knowledge of what I _was_ to see in defiance of my entreaty was not reassuring, I left the ball-room then and did not return to it again. I was glad there was no necessity why I should do so: they were all going." "Then you do not know--I did not dance with Sir Mark--after all?" I ask, eagerly, laying the bare tips of my fingers upon his arm. "No!" laying down the candle, while his color grows a shade deeper. "Did you refuse him, then?" "Yes; I said I was too tired; I said---" "Oh! Phyllis! darling--darling!" cries 'Duke, catching me in his arms before I can finish my confession, and straining me to his heart. "So you see you need not have been so very cold to me," I whisper from this safe retreat, feeling much relieved. It is positive torture to me to quarrel with any one.