habit and circumstance, lawfully bound to pay for the education of children and the necessary expenses of living.  In his inmost consciousness he knew very well that Innocent was not of the ordinary feminine mould—­she had visions of the high and unattainable, and her ideals of life were of that pure and transcendental quality which belongs to finer elements unseen.  The carnal mind can never comprehend spirituality,—­nevertheless, Jocelyn was a man cultured and clever enough to feel that though he himself could not enter, and did not even care to enter the uplifted spheres of thought, this strange child with a gift of the gods in her brain, already dwelt in them, serenely unconscious of any lower plane.  And she loved him!—­and he would, on that ground of love, teach her many things she had never known—­he would widen her outlook,—­warm her senses—­increase her perceptions—­train her like a wild rose on the iron trellis of his experience—­while thus to instruct an unworldly soul in worldliness would be for him an interesting and pleasurable pastime.

“And I can make her happy”—­was his additional thought—­“in the only way a woman is ever happy—­for a little while!”

All this ran through his mind as he held her hand a moment longer, till the convincing music of the band and the brilliant lights of the house warned them to break away from each other.

“We had better go straight to the ball-room and dance in,” he said.  “No one will have missed us long.  We’ve only been absent about a quarter of an hour.”

“So much in such a little time!” she said, softly.

He smiled, answering the adoring look of her eyes with his own amorous glance, and in another few seconds they were part of the brilliant whirl of dancers now crowding the ball-room and swinging round in a blaze of colour and beauty to the somewhat hackneyed strains of the “Fruhlings Reigen.”  And as they floated and flew, the delight of their attractiveness to each other drew them closer together till the sense of separateness seemed lost and whelmed in a magnetic force of mutual comprehension.

When this waltz was finished she was claimed by many more partners, and danced till she was weary,—­then, between two “extras,” she went in search of Miss Leigh, whom she found sitting patiently in one of the great drawing-rooms, looking somewhat pale and tired.

“Oh, my godmother!” she exclaimed, running up to her.  “I had forgotten how late it is getting!”

Miss Lavinia smiled cheerfully.

“Never mind, child!” she said.  “You are young and ought to enjoy yourself.  I am old, and hardly fit for these late assemblies—­and how very late they are too!  When I was a girl we never stayed beyond midnight—­”

“And is it midnight now?” asked Innocent, amazed, turning to her partner, a young scion of the aristocracy, who looked as if he had not been to bed for a week.

He smiled simperingly, and glanced at his watch.