Beyond the outer fringe of dancers she saw her mother standing among a group of the older people;—one of these was Miss Bailey, the principal of the suburban school in which Cornelia had once been a pupil. Cornelia had not seen her for several years and went conscientiously to greet her. Principal and former pupil made the appropriate exchanges; but Cornelia was rather vague with the grayish gentleman who had Miss Bailey upon his arm. Mrs. Cromwell said something as in correction of an error; but it was too late, and the couple had moved away before Cornelia understood. “You called her Miss Bailey,” Mrs. Cromwell explained. “She’s been married to Professor Bromley for two years.” “What! Was that funny little old——” Cornelia checked herself; but the tactful mother had already turned away to speak to someone else. The daughter stood and gazed at the stiff little old-fashioned gentleman standing punctiliously arm-in-arm with his wife. “Oh, dear _me_!” Cornelia whispered. Then she ran back, wide-eyed, to rejoin an anxious lad who had arrived late. “Look here,” he said. “You’ve missed another chance to let me meet your cousin. What did you run away like that for?” “To learn something important,” Cornelia told him. “Come on;—I’ll get you through to Elsie somehow.” For the unmasking of Elsie, that dreaded break in the spell, still postponed itself as the evening wore on. Her miraculous night continued to be a miracle to the end, and she was a girl grateful for wonders when she talked them over with her cousin in the big bedroom, after two o’clock in the morning. “I never met such darling people in the whole world!” she declared. “I never knew——” “What nonsense!” Cornelia laughed. “You must be perfectly used to being a sensation wherever you go, Elsie.” “A ‘sensation’?” Elsie cried. “_I?_” “Don’t tell me you don’t know it!” “Cornelia, you don’t understand. Nobody was ever really nice to me at a party before to-night in my whole life.” At that her cousin beamed upon her. “I believe that’s what I like best of all about you, Elsie.” “You mean nobody ever being nice to me before?” “No,” Cornelia laughed. “I mean your not admitting that you know it. Of course you do know, because it’s impossible for a girl like you not to realize the effect you have on people; but I love you for pretending you don’t see it.” “But it’s true,” Elsie insisted. “Until to-night nobody ever——” “Yes, yes! Go on! It’s very becoming, and it’s what placates the other girls so that you get both sexes in your train, you clever thing!” “I’m not clever, though,” the visitor protested. “I’m no good at all at pretending things. I’m not——”