Johnson murmured something about surprise and honour. “You will do just as well, Miss Saumarez, if you will introduce me to some nice girls,” he said eagerly. “Master Eddy promised me: but I know his promises is like pie crust. May I have the pleasure of the next dance?” Rosamond almost looked at him in her scorn--the next dance! as though every place on her card had not been filled in the first five minutes. “I will dance a quadrille with you,” she said, “if you will remain here quietly till I am ready, and not ask any one else.” “Oh, miss!” cried Johnson, in delight; “fancy my conducting myself like a gay Lothario, and asking any one else, when I have an offer from you!” Rosamond was not used to blushing, but she coloured high at this. She did not see the fun of it as Eddy would have done. She had no sense of humour. “If you will wait here till I am ready, I will dance with you,” she said. Johnson had been very indignant and deeply disappointed, not to be introduced to “the big-wigs,” as Eddy had promised. But when Eddy’s beautiful sister proposed to him to dance with her, not even waiting to be asked, his feelings sustained a wonderful change. He relaxed his watch upon Eddy, and waited with wonderful patience for the blissful moment when he should take his place among that dazzling throng. With this before him, he could enjoy the sight and the ecstatic sensation of forming part of the assembly, even though he knew no big-wigs. When they saw him dancing with Miss Saumarez, who was one of the beauties, if not, Johnson thought, flattered and flattering, _the_ beauty of the evening, they would change their minds about him. And indeed, the shabby little man made an extraordinary sensation when he joined, by the side of Miss Saumarez, the next quadrille. Who was he? where did he come from? everybody asked. And whispers ran among the throng, that a person so shabby, dancing with Miss Saumarez, one of the house party, must to the blood of the millionaires belong, and was probably the scion of a secondary Rothschild. Much curiosity was roused concerning him, and shabby as he looked, there is little doubt that after Rosamond he might have danced with almost any one he pleased. As a matter of fact, Archie, always good-natured, and unsuspicious of anything remarkable about Johnson, introduced him to several ladies, who did not object to allow him to inscribe his name upon their programmes. And Marion did more than this. She was just standing up with him for a waltz, and with her hand on his arm was about to enter the field, when another change occurred which made Johnson’s appearance and behaviour more extraordinary than ever. He suddenly stopped in the midst, just at the moment when he ought to have put his limp hand upon her waist, a contact which Rosamond had been unable to submit to, but which Marion, with her much less cultivated sense, found quite unobjectionable.