s an
advantage to have a dance you can dispose of later
on, so I continue to put the initials, although
Berke seldom dances now. He liked waltzing
with the Byrd girls best."

"You were very intimate with the Byrds, I
think you said," Thorne remarked idly, bowing
to an acquaintance as he spoke.

"Very intimate. See what came to me this
morning; all these exquisite flowers, just when I
needed them for to-night. Roy searched the
neighborhood through for white flowers without
success, and then these came. Aren't they
beautiful?" And she lifted her bouquet toward his face.

"Extremely beautiful!" he assented, bending
his head to inhale their fragrance. "It was very
kind and thoughtful of your friends to send them.
I suppose, from the connection, that they are a
Byrd offering."

Pocahontas laughed softly. "Yes," she said,
"but they did not come from Belle, or Nina, and
Susie is in California. Jim ordered them for me.
I am so pleased."

Thorne instantly raised his head and stiffened
his back as though the delicate perfume were
some noxious poison, and moved on with her
toward the parlors in silence.

"I wish you knew Jim, Mr. Thorne," pursued
the happy voice at his side; "he's such a good
fellow, so noble, generous, and unselfish; we're all
so fond of Jim. I wish he were here to-night to
tread a measure with me in the old rooms. You
would be sure to fraternize with Jim. You could
not help liking him."

Thorne drew in his lips ominously. He could
help liking Jim Byrd well enough, and felt not
the faintest desire for either his presence or his
friendship. The intervention of a woman with
whom two men are in love has never yet established
amity between them; the very suggestion
of such a thing on her lips is sufficient to cause
an irruption of hatred, malice and all unkindness.

Moreover, Thorne was in a fury with himself.
He had thought of sending for flowers for
Pocahontas at the same time he dispatched the order
to the Richmond florist for his aunt. He had
feverishly longed to do it, and had pondered the
matter fully half an hour before deciding that he
had better not. He had not scrupled to pay
Pocahontas attentions _before_ he realized that he
was in love with her, but that fact, once established
in his mind, placed her in a different
position in regard to him.

She was no longer the woman he wished to
draw into a flirtation _pour passer le temps_; she was
the woman he wished to marr