"Well?" she said, archly, pausing before him, on the arm of an Exhibition commissioner with whom she was about to plunge into the intricacies of the lancers. Mr. Westmoreland looked at her with a start and in momentary confusion. "Oh--er," he stammered, hurriedly, "_here_ you are! Where have you been hiding yourself all the evening?" Then, after a pause, "Got any dances saved for me?" "_Saved_, indeed!" she retorted. "What next? When you don't take the trouble to come and ask for them!" "I am so engaged to-night, Miss Eleanor----" "I see you are. Never mind--I can get on without you." She walked on a step, and turned back. "Did you send me a pretty bouquet just now?" she whispered, touching his arm. "I think you did, and it was so good of you, but there was some mistake about it--" She checked herself, seeing a blank look in his face, and blushed violently. "Oh, it was _not_ you!" she exclaimed, in a shocked voice, wishing the ball-room floor would open and swallow her up. "Really," he said, "I--I was very remiss--I'm awfully sorry." And he gave her to understand, to her profound consternation, that he had fully intended to send her a bouquet, but had forgotten it in the rush of his many important engagements. She passed on to her lancers with a wan smile, and presently saw him, under those seductive fern trees upstairs, with the person whom he had been looking for when she accosted him. "There's Westmoreland and his old flame," remarked her then partner, a club-frequenting youth who knew all about everybody. "_He_ calls her the handsomest woman out--because she's got a lot of money, I suppose. All the Westmorelands are worshippers of the golden calf, father and son--a regular set of screws the old fellows were, and he's got the family eye to the main chance. Trust him! _I_ can't see anything in her; can you? She's as round as a tub, and as swarthy as a gipsy. I like women"--looking at his partner--"to be tall, and slender, and fair. That's _my_ style." This was how poor Eleanor's pleasure in her first ball was spoiled. I am aware that it looks a very poor and shabby little episode, not worthy of a chapter to itself; but then things are not always what they seem, and, as a matter of fact, the life histories of a large majority of us are made up of just such unheroic passages. CHAPTER XXVIII. "WRITE ME AS ONE WHO LOVES HIS FELLOW MEN."