vanished for
the time. There were jigging couples and prancing couples; couples that
bounced round like imprisoned bees, and couples that glided past in calm
and conscious superiority. He alone stood apart, excluded from the happy
throng, and he began to have a pathetic sense of injury.

But the music stopped at last, and Ada, dismissing her partner, came
towards him. "You don't seem to be enjoying yourself, Mr. Tweddle," she
said maliciously.

"Don't I?" he replied. "Well, so long as you are, it don't matter, Miss
Parkinson--it don't matter."

"But I'm not--at least, I didn't that dance," she said. "That soldier
man did talk such rubbish, and he trod on my feet twice. I'm so hot! I
wonder if it's cooler outside?"

"Will you come and see?" he suggested, and this time she did not disdain
his arm, and they strolled out together.

Following a path they had hitherto left unexplored, they came to a
little enclosure surrounded by tall shrubs; in the centre, upon a low
pedestal, stood a female statue, upon which a gas lamp, some paces off,
cast a flickering gleam athwart the foliage.

The exceptional grace and beauty of the figure would have been apparent
to any lover of art. She stood there, her right arm raised, partly in
gracious invitation, partly in queenly command, her left hand extended,
palm downwards, as if to be reverentially saluted. The hair was parted
in boldly indicated waves over the broad low brow, and confined by a
fillet in a large loose knot at the back. She was clad in a long chiton,
which lapped in soft zig-zag folds over the girdle and fell to the feet
in straight parallel lines, and a chlamys hanging from her shoulders
concealed the left arm to the elbow, while it left the right arm free.

In the uncertain light one could easily fancy soft eyes swimming in
those wide blank sockets, and the ripe lips were curved by a dreamy
smile, at once tender and disdainful.

Leander Tweddle and Miss Ada Parkinson, however, stood before the statue
in an unmoved, not to say critical, mood.

"Who's she supposed to be, I wonder?" asked the young lady, rather as if
the sculptor were a harmless lunatic whose delusions took a marble shape
occasionally. This, by the way, is a question which may frequently be
heard in picture galleries, and implies an enlightened tolerance.

"I don't know," said Leander; "a foreign female, I fancy--that's
Russian on the pedestal." He inferred this from a resemblance to the
characte