always liked Horace, too, and for a few hours, had even condescended to amuse herself by captivating him. No wonder she obeyed her first impulse, and greeted him with undisguised delight.

Neglecting the first principles of agreeable conversation, which forbid inquiries after anybody, Horace tumbled neck and crop into a solecism at the earliest opportunity by the awkward question, "Is Lexley in town, and where are you both staying?"

She raised her veil now, and looked him full in the face. He was shocked to see how deep a mark sorrow had already set on that commanding beauty which so struck him a few months ago.

"Mr. Maxwell," she said in a low earnest voice," do you remember the first secret between you and me?"

"I am not likely to forget it," answered Horace, who never could talk to a woman quite as he would to a man.

"Do you remember what you said about a gentleman ?”

"Yes, Mrs. Lexley. Honour among thieves,' and 'Love laughs at locksmiths,' have been the two maxims of my life."

“Then I will trust to your honour as I did once before. Mr. Maxwell, I am very unhappy-I am in a very painful position. I have left my home-I have left my-Mr. Lexley, never to return. I cannot explain why, any more than I could explain that evening at the Priors how I came to know Mr. Mortimer. I am in London alone, without a friend in the world. Stop! I trust you because you are a gentleman. I mean to be alone-I mean to be without a friend; and I charge you as a gentleman to respect my confidence. Never attempt to see me, never recognise me if we meet, never tell a living being you found me here to-day. If you play me false, you will drive me from this great swarming town, my only refuge, and where can I hide my head then but in the grave?"

"You distress me," said Horace, "even more than you puzzle me. Of course I will keep your secret, of course I will respect your confidence. But to be alone and friendless in London means also to be helpless and-and-perhaps straitened in circumstances. You will at least let me know where you live."

He was interested. He was thoroughly in earnest. He pitied her from his heart, and he showed it in his manner. While he was thus absorbed, Annie Dennison passed a few paces off on horseback unobserved, and saw him pleading earnestly with the lady of whom she had been so mistrustful when she was Miss Blair. Poor Annie. would have died rather than owned how much it hurt her.

But all his arguments and entreaties were in vain. Laura stood firm, denied him her address, would not consent to see him, hear from him, hold any communication with him again. The utmost he could get her to concede was that if at a future time she should find herself in dire need or deadly sickness, she would let him know, on the solemn

condition that, even in such extremity, he would never reveal the secret of her hiding-place to a soul.

"Promise me that, Mr. Maxwell," said she, while he held her hand at the corner of a bye-street, "on your honour as a gentleman, and promise me, too, that you will try not to think of me so badly as I seem to deserve."

Then she dropped her veil and left him, feeling she had severed the last link that bound her to her former life.

Maxwell looked after her long and wistfully, sorely tempted to follow and find out where she lived, in defiance of her express instructions.

"What ought I to do?" thought this perplexed squire of dames. "In all my experience I have never been so completely at sea. She might starve. By Jove! I believe she would starve rather than let one know. What is she up to? I can't make her out. Then there's Lexley. Poor old chap!-right or wrong, it will break his heart. Surely it would be only fair to let him know. I'll ask Percy. Hang it! I can't I gave my word of honour. And, after all, one is a gentleman! It's very inconvenient-very. Poor thing! How she has gone off, and how handsome I used to think her before-before I made such an ass of myself about the other one! What a trouble women are to be sure! In the meantime, I must go and dress."

CHAPTER XVIII.

MRS. PIKE'S BALL.

WHATEVER Sorrows young ladies think well to cherish in the privacy of their own chambers, or even in presence of a confidential maid, they take care to hide every trace of vexation and anxiety when they emerge radiant before the world, going down to battle armed at all points, and thirsting for the fray. Annie Dennison never looked. prettier in her life than while she stood at the top of Mrs. Pike's staircase, helping her friend to receive some of the best, and, we may be permitted to hope, the most virtuous people in London, who came to swell her ball.

Mrs. Pike had no young ladies of her own, that is to say, in a ballgoing sense; the two mites she took about in her victoria being as yet removed by many years from the period of emancipation and flirtation; but she loved Annie dearly as a sister, if indeed that expression conveys true attachment. And it was understood by all the worthy guests who were likely to send invitations of repayment that this ball of Mrs. Pike's was given for Miss Dennison.

A very ornamental couple they were, making courtesy after courtesy in return for the greetings of those who bowed, shook hands, and

passed on. "Dear Letty, you look so nice!" had been Annie's exclamation when she arrived, early of course, while taking in at a glance her friend's entire toilette-white dress, white flowers, white skin, white teeth, and white fan, as usual.

"Dear Annie, if it comes off at my ball I shall be so pleased!" replied the matron, with a meaning smile that caused the young lady to frown a little and sigh a little, though she did not blush at all. Nevertheless, there was the sparkle of a conqueror in Miss Dennison's eye, and whether or not she proposed giving quarter to the vanquished, there seemed little doubt that she would herself come off triumphant in the strife.

The General looked splendid.

To use Percy Mortimer's expres

sion, he was "all over the place." Amongst the dancers, amongst the chaperones, amongst the waiters in the supper-room, the very link-men in the street-he seemed simply ubiquitous, and wherever his bald head was seen to shine, his energetic gloves to wave, there order was re-established, and perfect discipline prevailed once more.

Even Mrs. Dennison, who, difficult to please, and protesting all the while, had left her husband fast asleep in his arm-chair, to bring her diamonds here, in their old-fashioned setting, condescended to express approval. The General was so eager, so energetic, so demonstrative, "so different from your uncle, my dear," as she observed to Annie, and in such comparison summed up her utmost meed of praise. People were trooping in by scores. Carriage-lamps winked and glowed all down the street, all about the square, and half-a-mile round the corner, while broughams and family-coaches that had not yet "set down," crept onward in an endless string. Crowds of particoloured footmen thronged the entrance. Billows of red, white, and variegated wrappings rose mountain-high in the cloak-room, where Mrs. Pike's maid and Annie's rushed about in the smartest of gowns with pincushions in their hands, scrutinising every lady's dress as she came in, and keeping all its details in mind for a week. Beautiful women moved stately, as in procession, up the stairs, their sweeping draperies, graceful figures, and abundant hair showing to advantage in the floods of light that streamed from the ball-room; while here and there a lovely head was turned, a pair of lustrous eyes smiled down, on some favoured object in the crowd below, and the object pressing a flat hat against his heart, while he begged somebody's pardon at every step, followed as best he might. The confusion of tongues was great, the conversation voluble if not instructive, tinged, it may be, with a certain sameness and remarkable for that brevity which is said to be the soul of wit.

"Been here long?"-" Just come."-"Going on to Lady Boreall's?" "You cut me to-day in the Park. I've taken our stalls for Saturday."-" What a bad dinner!"-" Who's that in pink? She's not so

pretty as her sister. Did you get my note? Give us the first round? -The next ?"-"Can't; I'm full, all but one square."

Dancing had begun in earnest. Black coats and blonde heads were whirling about in clouds of lace, tulle, and transparencies filmy and delicate as the gossamer on a June meadow at dawn. Here and there a lady whose dancing days were over, quitted her seat by the wall, and sought the tea-room, on the same arm, perhaps, that had supported her through unforgotten waltzes twenty years ago. She used to blush then with a shy delight, and it was pleasing to observe that although but a question of temperature, she had a good deal of colour still. Already certain alcoves, and places of retirement, conspicuous for their very pretence of seclusion, were occupied by whispering couples, who had, however, the good taste not to remain too long in the same spot, and looked more or less relieved when their tête-àtête was over. Á strain of dance-music, sad for its very sweetness, rose and sank, and swelled, and even paused for a measured space, to wail again, sadder, sweeter, softer than before, while with deepening eyes, flushing cheeks, panting bosoms, and thrilling whispers, the magic circles were completed again and again, and with pleading entreaties for "just one turn more," yet again. Mrs. Pike was pleased to think how well it was all going off, and Horace Maxwell, having made his bow, contemplated the scene from the doorway, with wandering, hankering eyes, that, like sea-birds of the Bosphorus, flitting from wave to wave, sought, but seemed not to find, the wished-for place of rest.

A prosperous dame of a certain age, whose aquiline features and lavender dress presented a marked resemblance to a Dorking hen, introduced him in vain to her solitary chick, with whom, in consideration that he had dined at her papa's twice, he certainly ought to have danced once. A spinster whose day for waltzing should have been past, though her time for marriage seemed not yet to have arrived, looked imploringly at him over her fan; yet he remained a man of stone. Even Mrs. Pike's good-natured, "Dear Mr. Maxwell, go and get a partner," failed to rouse his energies, while the General himself, who found a moment to shake him cordially by the hand, bounced back to his avocations, wishing that the decencies of life and his young wife's permission might only have entitled him, to "show these young fellows how we used to do it in my time!"

But Horace felt a hundred at least, for scanning every group of dancers, and every bench in the ball-room, he failed to discover either Annie Dennison or Percy Mortimer, and with that instinctive clairvoyance possessed by the lower animals for their well-being, but by man for the promotion of his discomfort, was satisfied that this couple, being absent, must be together.

Drawn from whatever source, the inference was right. Percy,

characteristically seated in a comfortable arm-chair, with his flat hat on one footstool, and his neat little boots on another, had engaged himself in an earnest conversation with Miss Dennison, to which that young lady, in a constrained attitude and a fit of vexation, at least, if not ill-humour, seemed to listen with wondering attention.

Horace, passing the door of the boudoir in which they were ensconced, did not fail to take in the situation with one rapid glance, that showed him a deeper flush than common on Annie's cheek, an unusual restlessness in the impatience with which she pulled to pieces the bouquet in her hand. Though he fleeted past like a ghost, she on her side felt, rather than saw, that he looked pale and sorrowful, with reproachful eyes that haunted her afterwards in her dreams. She had come to the ball very unhappy, but somehow she felt a little better now. Perhaps Percy, who certainly possessed the knack of amusing, made himself particularly agreeable; perhaps her own thoughts were comforting; perhaps she was conscious that she had the race in hand, could win as she liked, and might, if she chose, show some people that other people were not afraid to know their own minds.

"How you are spoiling the bouquet I sent you," said Percy, drawing, as he intended, her indignant rejoinder,

"You didn't! I got it from Uncle John."

"Then how you are spoiling Uncle John's bouquet," resumed her admirer. "Is it because you don't like flowers, or because you don't like Uncle John, or because you don't like me?"

"I like flowers, and I like Uncle John," replied Annie, burying her face in the disordered bouquet to hide a blush that emboldened him to proceed.

"Would you pull the flowers to pieces if I had sent them?" he asked, and wondered to find his heart beating, while he waited for an

answer.

"You never did give me a bouquet, so how can I tell?" returned Miss Annie. "Don't you think it's very hot here? Shall we go back to the tea-room ?"

"Not till we have had it out about the flowers," answered Mortimer. "If I thought it possible you could value anything I can give, I would offer you all I have in the world, encumbered only with myself. Miss Dennison, will you accept it?"

"No," whispered Annie, rising from her seat to take his arm in a perfectly friendly manner, and guide him back to the ball-room.

He was much too good a fellow, and true a gentleman to show that he was hurt, though he could not but reflect that such a facer as this he had never received in his life. Refused! Distinctly and positively refused! He, Percy Mortimer, for whom half the girls in London were angling, whose experience had hitherto taught him that to ask and have, if he only asked often enough, were one and the same thing.