ut I'm going with papa and the Sharons I'll see you there."

"Looks to me as if you were awfully conventional," George grumbled; and
his disappointment was deeper than he was willing to let her see--though
she probably did see. "Well, we'll dance the cotillion together,
anyhow."

"I'm afraid not. I promised Mr. Kinney."

"What!" George's tone was shocked, as at incredible news. "Well, you
could break that engagement, I guess, if you wanted to! Girls always can
get out of things when they want to. Won't you?"

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Because I promised him. Several days ago."

George gulped, and lowered his pride, "I don't--oh, look here! I only
want to go to that thing tonight to get to see something of you; and if
you don't dance the cotillion with me, how can I? I'll only be here two
weeks, and the others have got all the rest of your visit to see you.
Won't you do it, please?"

"I couldn't."

"See here!" said the stricken George. "If you're going to decline to
dance that cotillion with me simply because you've promised a--a--a
miserable red-headed outsider like Fred Kinney, why we might as well
quit!"

"Quit what?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean," he said huskily.

"I don't."

"Well, you ought to!"

"But I don't at all!"

George, thoroughly hurt, and not a little embittered, expressed himself
in a short outburst of laughter: "Well, I ought to have seen it!"

"Seen what?"

"That you might turn out to be a girl who'd like a fellow of the
red-headed Kinney sort. I ought to have seen it from the first!"

Lucy bore her disgrace lightly. "Oh, dancing a cotillion with a person
doesn't mean that you like him--but I don't see anything in particular
the matter with Mr. Kinney. What is?"

"If you don't see anything the matter with him for yourself," George
responded, icily, "I don't think pointing it out would help you. You
probably wouldn't understand."

"You might try," she suggested. "Of course I'm a stranger here, and if
people have done anything wrong or have something unpleasant about
them, I wouldn't have any way of knowing it, just at first. If poor Mr.
Kinney--"

"I prefer not to discuss it," said George curtly. "He's an enemy of
mine."

"Why?"

"I prefer not to discuss it."

"Well, but--"

"I prefer not to discuss it!"

"Very well." She began to hum the air of the song which Mr. George
Amberson was now discoursing, "O moon of my delight that knows no
wane"--and t