As he took leave of Roberta, Richard found opportunity to exchange with her ever so brief a conversation. "This has been quite a wonderful experience to me, Miss Gray," said he. "I shall not forget it." Her eyes searched his for an instant, but found there only sincerity. "You have done your part better than could have been expected," she admitted. "What grudging commendation! What should you have expected? That I should sulk in a corner because I couldn't have things all my own way?" She coloured richly, and he rejoiced at having put her in confusion for an instant. "Of course not. But every one wouldn't have eyes to see the beauties of a family party where all the fun wasn't for the young people." "There was only one dance I enjoyed better than the one with Mrs. Rufus Gray." He lowered his tone so that she could hear. "Since you have commended me for doing as your brother bade me--be all things to all partners--will you give me my reward by letting me tell you that I shall never hear 'Roses Red' again without thinking of the most perfect dance I ever had?" "That sounds like an appropriate farewell from the cotillion leader," said Roberta. Then instantly she knew that in her haste to cover a very girlish sense of pleasure in the thing he had said she herself had said an unkind one. She knew it as a slow red came into her guest's handsome face and his eyes darkened. Before he could speak--though, indeed, he did not seem in haste to speak--she added, putting out her hand impulsively: "Forgive me; I didn't mean it. You have been lovely to every one to-night, and I have appreciated it. I am wrong; I think you are much more--and have in you far more--than--as if you were only--the thing I said." He made no immediate reply, though he took the hand she gave him. He continued to look at her for so long that her own eyes fell. When he did speak it was in a low, odd tone which she could not quite understand. "Miss Gray," said he, "if you want to cut a man to the quick, insist on thinking him that which he has never had any love for being, and which he has grown to detest the thought of. But perhaps it's a salutary sort of surgery, for--by the powers! if I can't make you think differently of me it won't be for lack of will. So--thank you for being hard on me, thank you for everything. Good-night!" As she looked at him march away with his head up, her hand was aching with the force of the almost brutally hard grip he had given it with that last speech. Her final glimpse of him showed him with a tinge of the angry red still lingering on his cheek, and a peculiar set to his finely cut mouth which she had never noticed there before. But, in spite of this, anything more courtly than his leave-taking of her mother and her Aunt Ruth she had never seen from one of the young men of the day. CHAPTER IX MR. KENDRICK ENTERTAINS