cer to give a large ball in her great house in
Germantown. All visiting Knickerbockers who might expect to be asked
anywhere were asked to attend this ball, and Lilda's maid assured the
hotel chambermaid that she never had known her young lady so hard to
suit. And finally, after three different trials, to pick out that
strange black mousseline-de-soie! She looked like pictures of
foreigners, to tell you the truth, her young lady did! Of course, her
grandmamma's pearls would make anything dressy, and there's no denying
the black made her arms and neck look like ivory--but to snatch up that
flame-coloured scarf her grandpapa had brought from India, and knot it
over her shoulder at the last minute! It was downright outlandish.
Mrs. Appleyard would never have liked it.

She had a high, staglike carriage of the head, and as she was rather
tall, she looked over most of her girl companions. Halfway through the
dance she raised this dark head a little higher and stared.

"Who is that man?" she asked abruptly.

"Elliot Lestrange," the girls told her, "but he doesn't care for women.
He's very proud."

"I should like to meet him," she said simply.

They tittered and teased her, but after all, she was a belle, and Mr.
Lestrange was sent for. The young dancing man who undertook the
message told freely how Lestrange had said,

"Oh, hang it all, I'm not dancing to-night!"

"But she's Miss Appleyard, of Boston and New York--she's a beauty!"

"Then she must have plenty of beaux, Clarke, without me!"

So young Mr. Clarke took his little revenge (for after all, he had used
his dance with the dark beauty for this stupid errand and resented it),
and in presenting the chilly hero, said maliciously,

"Here is Mr. Lestrange, Miss Appleyard--but he says you must have
plenty of beaux without him!"

"That is just it," returned the calm Lilda, looking straight at the
grey eyes that faced her under the thick honey-coloured hair
(Lestrange, though of Huguenot descent, was curiously blonde). "I have
_not_ enough beaux--without Mr. Lestrange! Will you have the next
waltz, Mr. Lestrange--Mr. Clarke's, I believe it is?"

"Thank you, yes, and this schottische, too, if I may," says Lestrange.
The young people standing about said that they never took their eyes
off each other from the moment she spoke to him, and that they swung
into the dance like automatons, leaving her lawful squire, a young
Philadelphian, irate and ridiculous.