."

"And you are to be the queen of it--my queen," said Conrad Winstanley
in a low voice. "I am to have the first waltz, remember that. If the
Prince of Wales were my rival I would not give way."

He detained her hand in his as she alighted from the carriage. She
snatched it from him angrily.

"I have a good mind not to dance at all," she said.

"Why not?"

"It is paying too dearly for the pleasure to be obliged to dance with
you."

"In what school did you learn politeness, Miss Tempest?"

"If politeness means civility to people I despise, I have never learned
it," answered Vixen.

There was no time for further skirmishing. He had taken her cloak from
her, and handed it to the attendant nymph, and received a ticket; and
now they were drifting into the tea-room, where a row of ministering
footmen were looking at the guests across a barricade of urns and
teapots, with countenances that seemed to say, "If you want anything,
you must ask for it. We are here under protest, and we very much wonder
how our people could ever have invited such rabble!"

"I always feel small in a tea-room when there are only met in
attendance," whispered Mr. Scobel, "they are so haughty. I would sooner
ask Gladstone or Disraeli to pour me out a cup of tea than one of those
supercilious creatures."

Lady Southminster was stationed in the Teniers room--a small apartment
at the beginning of the suite which ended in the picture-gallery or
ball-room. She was what Joe Gargery called a "fine figure of a woman,"
in ruby velvet and diamonds, and received her guests with an in
discriminating cordiality which went far to heal the gaping wounds of
county politics.

The Ellangowans had arrived, and Lady Ellangowan, who was full of
good-nature, was quite ready to take Violet under her wing when Mrs.
Scobel suggested that operation.

"I can find her any number of partners," she said. "Oh, there she
goes--off--already with Captain Winstanley."

The Captain had lost no time in exacting his waltz. It was the third on
the programme, and the band were beginning to warm to their work They
were playing a waltz by Offenbach--"_Les Traineaux_"--with an
accompaniment of jingling sleigh-bells--music that had an almost
maddening effect on spirits already exhilarated.

The long lofty picture-gallery made a magnificent ball-room--a polished
floor of dark wood--a narrow line of light under the projecting
cornice, the famous Paul Veronese, the world-renowned