found a partner: no less a
personage than Lady Frazer of the lilac sarsnet and diamond bandeau.

For some unaccountable reason, in this infernal _impasse_ my spirits
began to rise, to soar. I declare it: I led Flora forward to the set
with a gaiety which may have been unnatural, but was certainly not
factitious. A Scotsman would have called me fey. As the song goes--and
it matters not if I had it then, or read it later in my wife's library--

"Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,
Sae dauntingly gaed he;
He played a spring and danced it round
Beneath----"

never mind what. The band played the spring and I danced it round, while
my cousin eyed me with extorted approval. The quadrille includes an
absurd figure--called, I think, _La Pastourelle_. You take a lady with
either hand, and jig them to and fro, for all the world like an
Englishman of legend parading a couple of wives for sale at Smithfield;
while the other male, like a timid purchaser, backs and advances with
his arms dangling.

"I've lived a life of sturt and strife,
I die by treacherie----"

I challenged Alain with an open smile as he backed before us; and no
sooner was the dance over, than I saw him desert Lady Frazer on a
hurried excuse, and seek the door to satisfy himself that his men were
on guard.

I dropped laughing into a chair beside Flora. "Anne," she whispered;
"who is on the stairs?"

"Two Bow Street runners."

If you have seen a dove--a dove caught in a gin! "The back stairs!" she
urged.

"They will be watched too. But let us make sure." I crossed to the
tea-room, and, encountering a waiter, drew him aside. Was there a man
watching the back entrance? He could not tell me. For a guinea would he
find out? He went, and returned in less than a minute. Yes, there was a
constable below. "It's just a young gentleman to be put to the horn for
debt," I explained, recalling the barbarous and, to me, still unmeaning
phrase. "I'm no speiring," replied the waiter.

I made my way back, and was not a little disgusted to find my chair
occupied by the unconscionable Chevenix.

"My dear Miss Flora, you are unwell!" Indeed, she was pale enough, poor
child, and trembling. "Major, she will be swooning in another minute.
Get her to the tea-room, quick! while I fetch Miss Gilchrist. She must
be taken home."

"It is nothing," she faltered: "it will pass. Pray do not--" As she
glanced up, she caught my meaning. "Yes, yes: I will go home."

S