Bertha laughed,--a laugh whose faintness might have arisen from her rapid motion. "He's rather rigorous-looking," she said; "but he always was. Still, I remember I was beginning to like him quite well when he went West. Papa is very fond of him. He turns out to be a persistent, heroic kind of being--with a purpose in life, and the rest of it." "His size is heroic enough," said Arbuthnot. "He would look better on a pedestal in a public square than in a parlor." Bertha made no reply, but, after having made the round of the room twice, she stopped. "I am not dancing well," she said. "I do not think I am in a dancing mood. I will sit down." Arbuthnot glanced at her, and then looked away. "Do you want to be quiet?" he asked. "I want to be quieter than this," she answered; "for a few minutes. I believe I am tired." "You have been going out too much," he said, as he led her into a small side-room which had been given up to a large, ornate punch-bowl, to do reverence to which occasional devotees wandered in and out. "I have been going out a great deal," she answered. She leaned back in the luxurious little chair he had given her, and looked across the hall into the room where the waltz was at its height, and, having looked, she laughed. "Do you see that girl in the white dress, which doesn't fit," she said,--"the plump girl who bags at the waist and is oblivious to it--and everything else but her waltz and her partner?" "Yes," he responded; "but I hope you are not laughing at her,--there is no need of it. She's having a fascinating time." "Yes," she returned. "She is having a lively time; but I am not laughing at her, but at what she reminds me of. Do you know, I was just that age when Colonel Tredennis saw me last. I was not that size or that shape, and my dresses used to fit--but I was just that age, and just as oblivious, and danced with just that spirit of enjoyment." "You dance with just as much enjoyment now," said Arbuthnot, "and you are quite as oblivious at times, though it may suit your fancy just at the present moment to regard yourself as a shattered wreck confronted with the ruins of your lost youth and innocence. I revel in that kind of thing myself at intervals, but it does not last." "No," she said, opening her fan with a smile, and looking down at the Cupids and butterflies adorning it, "of course it won't last, and I must confess that I am not ordinarily given to it--but that man! Do you know, it was a curious sort of sensation that came over me when I first saw him. I was standing near a window, talking to half-a-dozen people, and really enjoying myself very much,--you know I nearly always enjoy myself,--and suddenly something seemed to make me look up--and there he stood!"