"Very. At least it seemed so to me," says Ryde with heavy adoration in his glance. Feeling, rather than seeing, that Mr. Desmond has brought his fair companion to an anchor close behind her, Monica says, in a soft sweet voice,-- "I didn't _mean_ to be late. No, indeed! I hurried all I could; but my aunts are slow to move. I was _longing_ to be here, but they would make no haste." "You _really_ longed to be here?" asks he, eagerly. "Well, that _was_ good of you! And now you have come you will be kind to me, won't you? You will give me all the dances you can spare?" "That would be a great many," says she, laughing a little. "You might tire of me if I said yes to that. The fact is, I know nobody here, and _certainly_ there is no one I care to dance with." "You will have another tale to tell later on," returns he, gazing with unrepressed admiration at her charming face. "Before the avalanche of worshippers descends, promise me all the waltzes." "Are my dances, then, so necessary to you?" with a swift upward glance. "They are, at all events, the only ones I care for," returns he, clumsily, but heartily. "All the others will lie in the scale with duty." "'Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own,'" quotes Monica, lightly. "Why dance unless you wish it?" "Because my soul is _not_ my own," responds he, with a sigh. "I am bound to dance with every undanceable woman here to-day, or they will go home and revile me. You _ought_ to be sorry for me if you aren't." "Well, I am," says Monica; "and so you shall have every waltz on the programme." With this she lets him take her in his arms again, and float away with her to the strains of the waltz then playing, and far away from Desmond's jealous ears. "Well, I had no idea it was in her," says Mrs. Bohun, in a breathless sort of manner, when Monica has quite vanished. "All that was meant for you, you know; and how _well_ she did it!" "But _why_ should it be meant for me? What have I done that she should so ill use me?" says Desmond, also breathless. "And you speak of her as if you admired her and she ought to be praised for her conduct when you have just heard from my own lips how devotedly I am attached to her!" "I cannot help admiring genius when I see it," says Olga, with a gay laugh. "She made up her mind--naughty little thing!--to make you miserable a minute ago, and--she succeeded. What can compare with success! But in very truth, Brian," tapping his arm familiarly with her fan (an action Monica notes from the other side of the room), "I would see you a victor too, and in this cause. She is as worthy of you as you of her, and a fig for one's cousins and sisters and aunts, when Cupid leads the way." She has thrown up her head, and is looking full of spirit, when young Ronayne, approaching her, says, smiling,-- "This is our dance, I think, Mrs. Bohun?" "Is it? So far so good!" She turns again to Brian: