Then it would be observed that toward this bright head darker ones darted and zigzagged through the crowd more frequently than toward any other, as the ardent youths plunged to “cut in”; and when the music stopped the lovely girl was not for an instant left to the single devotion of her partner. Other girls, as well as the young men, flocked about her, and wherever she moved there seemed to be something like a retinue. Thus the first question of the stranger, looking on, came to be expected as customary—almost inevitable, “Who is that?” The reply was as invariable, delivered with the amused condescension of a native receiving tribute to his climate or public monuments. “That’s what visitors always ask first. It’s Anne Cromwell.” Mrs. Cromwell, sitting among contemporaries on the veranda that overlooked the dancing-floor, had often heard both the question and the answer, and although she was one of those mothers known as “sensible,” she never heard either without a natural thrill of pride. But she was tactful enough to conceal her feeling from the mothers of other girls, and usually laughed deprecatingly, implying that she knew as well as any one how little such ephemeral things signified. Anne had her own deprecating laughter for tributes, and the most eager flatterer could not persuade her to the air of accepting them seriously; so that both mother and daughter, appearing to set no store by Anne’s triumphs, really made them all the more secure. It was a true instinct guiding them, the same that prevailed with Cæsar when thrice he refused the crown; for what hurts our little human hearts, when we watch a competitor’s triumph, is his pride and his pleasure in it. If he can persuade us that it brings him neither we will not grudge it to him, but may help him to greater. Moreover, both Anne and her mother believed themselves to be entirely genuine in their deprecation of Anne’s preëminence, and, when they were alone together, talked tributes over with the same modest laughter they had for them in company. Yet Mrs. Cromwell never omitted to tell Anne of any stranger’s “Who is that?” nor of all the other pleasing things said to her, or in her hearing, of her daughter. And, on her own part, Anne laughed and told of the like things that had been said to her, or that she had overheard. “Of course, it doesn’t mean anything,” she would add. “I just thought I’d tell you.” For the truth was that Anne’s triumphs were the breath of life to both mother and daughter, and they were doomed to make the ancient discovery that our dearest treasures are those that are threatened.