Before seven o’clock they were ready for their walk on the Battery, and came trooping down the wide stairway, a brilliant company of lovely girls in their spencers of various coloured silks, and their pink or white frocks, their gipsy straw bonnets, and their low walking shoes fastened with silver or paste latchets. In twos and threes they sauntered along the lovely walk, and as the young moon rose, the band played sweetly from a boat on the water, and the waves broke gently against the wall of the embankment, their laughter and merry talk became lower and quieter. They rested on the benches, and made little confidences, and were very happy, though their joy was lulled and hushed, as if for this rare hour some friendly spirit had pressed gently down the soft pedal on life, and thus made its felicity more enchanting and more personal. But if they forget the dance, their little feet had memories; they began to twitch and slip in and out, and grow restless; and Sapphira remembered the hour, though Leonard was charming, and the tale he was telling her, wonderful. “But then,” she said, “mother is expecting us, and those at home must not be disappointed; for if there is anything grandmother likes, it is to watch the dance.” So they went back to the Bloommaert house and found all ready and waiting for the cotillion. Upstairs with fleetest steps went the merry maidens, returning in less than ten minutes without their spencers, and with feet shod in satin sandals. The fiddles were twanging, and the prompter already advising gentlemen to choose their partners. Then the room became a living joy. The hearts of all beat with the twinkling steps of the dancers, and every one seized a measure of fleeting bliss, and for a breathing space in life forgot that they would ever grow weary or ever have to part. Madame sat in her son’s chair, flushed and smiling, her eyes wandering between her granddaughters. They were certainly the most beautiful women in the room, and when the judge came quietly to her side about ten o’clock she said to him: “Look once at Annette; at her feet are half the men; and as for Sapphira, I know not what to make of her--all of the men are her lovers, but some one was telling me it is Leonard Murray only that pleases her. I take leave to say they are a handsome couple, Gerardus.” Involuntarily he followed his mother’s direction, and was forced to admit the truth of her remark. But it gave him an angry pain to do so, while the young man’s expression of rapturous satisfaction provoked him beyond words. He had Sapphira’s hand, they were treading a measure--not so much to the music of the violins as to the music in their own hearts. They had forgotten the limitations of life, they were in some rarer and diviner atmosphere. Step to step, with clasped hands, and eyes beaming into each other’s face, they glided past him as if they were immortals moving to spheral music.