"Of course I do; but then, you see, I never saw a real, big ball before. Do you think they are all like that?" "To girls like you, yes, and I suppose to men like me." "But there are so few men like you." Romney's eyes looked a question. "So persistent and so jealous and so--dear--" With this Peggy pulled the ring off her finger and, tossing it lightly toward the lad, whispered,-- "Catch! and keep it if you can! It is my birthday gift." "I take the dare and I take the gift, and I will yet take something else. So there, Peggy!" But ere he had finished she had vanished up the stairway and the ball was over. CHAPTER XXI A ROOTED SORROW Before the last guest had taken his departure from Romney the red sun came bobbing up across the river and shot his rays in at the window. There is a sarcastic common-sense about the morning sun on such occasions. "Was it all worth while?" he seems to ask. "Consider the labor of preparation, the rushing about of the servants, the hours that my lady spent before her mirror with patch and powder-puff, the effort my fine gentleman expended upon his ruffles and falling bands. Then the occasion itself, the weary feet that trod the measure long after the toilsome pleasure had ceased to please, the lips that murmured sentiment knowing it was nonsense, the eyes that reversed the old moral maxim and strove to beam and not to see--Reflect upon all these and then sum up the aftermath,--the disordered rooms, the guttering candles, the faded flowers, the regretted vows, the heavy eyelids, the aching heads. Now, was it all worth while?" The answer of the overnight revellers would doubtless depend chiefly on age and temperament. Young men and maidens would reply that it was none of the sun's business; that he had never been at a ball, and did not know what he was talking about, and for themselves they preferred to reserve their confidences for the sympathetic moon, who, being so much younger than the sun, could better understand youthful experiences and emotions. Certainly that is what Romney Huntoon would have said. The commonplace day annoyed him. His mood was too sentimental for its searching light. He had slept little, and now at near noon hung about the foot of the stairway wondering at what time it would occur to Mistress Margaret Neville to come down. When she did appear disappointment was in store for him. She seemed to have forgotten wholly that little scene on the terrace, and when he held out his hand with her ring, that blessed little ring upon it, she only courtesied and asked if his mother were yet down stairs. At breakfast it was little better: she raved over Colonel Theophilus Payne, praised the bearing of Councillor Claiborne, said how she doted upon army men, commended the curls of one cavalier and the bearing of another,--all as if no such youth as Romney Huntoon had ever crossed her path.