“Ah! here you are,” she said.  “I have been wanting to find you to introduce—­” At that moment an old gentleman guffawed loudly near us, and so I did not catch the name she said, but we bowed, and the tall man asked me if I would dance that one with him.

Without the least hesitation I disengaged my hand from the arm of Augustus (he likes to walk thus on every occasion), and said, “Yes.”

“Oh!  I say,” said my fiance, with the savage look in his face, “you were going to dance with me.”

Then Lady Tilchester interfered—­what a dear and kind soul she must have!  She said so sweetly, as if Augustus was a prince, “Won’t you accept me as a substitute, Mr. Gurrage?”

Augustus was overcome with pride, and relinquished me with the best grace.

Now it was really bliss, dancing with this man; we swam along, swift and smoothly.  I could no longer see the walls; a maze of lights was all my vision grasped—­I felt bewildered—­happy.  We stopped a moment and he bent down and smiled at me.

“You look as if you liked dancing,” he said.  “Poor Lady Tilchester is being mauled by that bear in your place.”

I laughed.  “I love dancing.”

“I seldom do this sort of thing,” he continued, “but you are a beautiful mover,” and we began again.

When it was over we went and sat down in the very alcove of my first dance with Augustus.  I had no uneasiness this time!

I can’t say what there was about my partner—­a whimsical humor, a slight mocking sound in his voice, which pleased me; he took nothing seriously; everything he said was as light as a thistle-down; he reminded me of the wit of grandmamma and the Marquis; we got on beautifully.

“I seem to have seen you before,” he said, at last.  “Have I met you in Paris? or am I only dreaming? because I know you so well in the galleries at Versailles—­you stepped down from those frames just to honor us to-night, did you not?—­and you will go back at cock-crow!”

“If I only could!”

He asked me if I was staying at Brackney or Henchhurst, and when I said no, that I lived only a few miles off, he seemed so surprised.

His brown hair crimps nicely and is rather gray above the ears, but he does not look very old, perhaps not more than thirty-five or so, and now that one can see both his eyes, one realizes that they are rather attractive.  A grayish, greeny-blue, with black edges, and such black eyelashes!  They are as clear as clear, and I am sure he is a cat and can see in the dark.  He laughed at some of the people, even the ones who think themselves great, and he made me feel that he and I were the same and on a plane by ourselves, which was delightful.  All this time I did not know his name, nor he mine.  As he moved I saw a gold chain in the pocket of his white waistcoat, and just peeping out was the hilt of my little lost knife.  I said nothing—­I don’t know why—­it pleased me to see it there.  He had been away in the smoking-room most of the evening, he said, playing bridge.