Cecil became deadly pale, and an expression of agony came into his face. The lights in the domed roof above, and the figures of the whirling dancers below, seemed to multiply _ad infinitum_; the music sounded as if receding to a vast distance; the four corners of the hall seemed to be in swift pursuit of each other, as if it revolved on an axis: he read a strange expression of utter dismay in the face and dilated eyes of Mary, who had started from her seat; he made a wild, but futile clutch at the table to support himself, while a half-stifled cry escaped him, and he fell with a crash on the waxed floor, when a crowd instantly gathered round him, and voices in alarm rose on every side. 'Make way there--poor fellow taken ill--the heat--the ventilation here is horrible!' cried one. 'Stand back--stand back, please--air!' said an officer of Lancers, authoritatively. 'Lift him up,' cried another; 'he has fainted.' 'Screwed as an owl, you mean,' said a voice there was no mistaking. 'Silence, sir!' exclaimed Captain Acharn, sternly. But Hew, with his cruel cold smile, and an ill-suppressed gleam in his parti-coloured eyes, thought, 'If there is any nonsense still in her head about this fellow, surely it must end for ever now!' So Cecil, in a state of utter insensibility, was borne away by the hands of kind comrades, placed in a carriage, and conveyed home to his quarters by Acharn and Dick Freeport, who were in an intense state of concern and bewilderment; yet 'all went merry as a marriage bell' at the regimental ball, and the dancing continued till the morning sun began to redden the castle towers and Arthur's rocky cone; for hundreds in the rooms knew nothing of the matter; a few red-coats were suddenly missed--some engagements broken--and that was all. Mary danced no more that night, of course--or for the remainder of the morning, rather--and all that passed seemed a horrible dream, in which, however, Hew, singular to say, bore no part as yet in her mind, notwithstanding the significance of her words of warning during the dance. No suspicion so utterly monstrous as the reality was likely to occur to a mind like hers. The general and his party retired. He was horribly perplexed and shocked by an event so utterly out of his ken and experience, and he could recall no parallel case in all the long course of his military career--an officer taken _thus_ in a ball-room; for of course, such is human nature, that the worst construction was instantly put upon it. 'Hah!' muttered Hew, as the carriage bowled through the empty but magnificent streets to the westward; 'this comes of taking too much cognac with his soda-water. He'll be drummed out of society, and the regiment too, I suppose, for this,' he added with a grin to Mrs. Garth, who sat back in a corner of the carriage and sobbed sorrowfully. Finding that no answer was made to his ill-natured remarks, Hew said again: