Edwin, anxious not to be left behind, pulled on his gloves and split the thumb of one of them. He passed through the hall, where his name was announced, rather contemptuously, as he thought, by Hannah, the Willises’ tall and starchy servant, and was received in a manner that was reassuring and homely by Mrs. Willis. She spoke for a moment of his mother, and tears gathered in her rather watery eyes; then she introduced him to her small daughter Lilian, very self-conscious in a white party frock with a pale blue waistband, and another dark girl with beautiful grey eyes and a creamy rather than pale complexion, who was standing beside her. Miss Dorothy Powys, she said. Edwin, hedging for safety, booked a dance with Lilian, who took the matter as seriously as himself. Next, no doubt, he must have a shot at Miss Dorothy Powys, in spite of the disturbing beauty of her eyes; but when he came to ask her for a dance, he saw that Griffin was talking to her. “May I have another—number sixteen?” Edwin heard him ask easily. She smiled and nodded. Her smile seemed to Edwin very beautiful: so beautiful, indeed, that he couldn’t possibly bring himself to approach her when Griffin turned away. It was awfully silly of him, he thought. The evening was not exactly a success. He polkaed with Lilian, and took his place in the Lancers with several mature ladies to whom Mrs. Willis introduced him. Luckily none of these belonged to Halesby, a circumstance that must be attributed to Mrs. Willis’s tact, so that the question of his origin never arose. He danced according to the letter of Professor Beagle’s instructions. Neither grasping nor clasping, he let the ladies’ hands lie gently in his with the fingers half bent, and in no circumstances did he squeeze the figger. What he missed was the terrific motive power that the unladylike Professor Beagle had applied to his revolutions. It now appeared to him that to supply this was the part of the male; and as most of the matrons with whom Mrs. Willis supplied him were bulky, he had his work cut out. Once, returning thoroughly blown from one of these adventures he caught the eye of Dorothy Powys; and he thought she smiled. Could this be true? He wondered. . . . During the greater part of the evening when he had not been dancing he had found himself following her movements with his eyes. He had decided that she must be at least a year or two older than himself; but that didn’t really matter, for she seemed to him a creature of such very perfect grace, and her eyes, in the moment when he caught them, had been so wonderful. After the next dance, which was the one that she had booked with Griffin, he watched them disappear into the library.