e doesn't want us yet, but may take us in time. The other would
welcome us, but it would be for us a backward step. 'With malice towards
none, with charity for all,' we must do the best we can for ourselves
and those who are to follow us. Self-preservation is the first law of
nature."

His ball would serve by its exclusiveness to counteract leveling
tendencies, and his marriage with Mrs. Dixon would help to further the
upward process of absorption he had been wishing and waiting for.

II.

The ball was to take place on Friday night. The house had been put in
order, the carpets covered with canvas, the halls and stairs decorated
with palms and potted plants; and in the afternoon Mr. Ryder sat on his
front porch, which the shade of a vine running up over a wire netting
made a cool and pleasant lounging-place. He expected to respond to the
toast "The Ladies," at the supper, and from a volume of Tennyson--his
favorite poet--was fortifying himself with apt quotations. The volume
was open at A Dream of Fair Women. His eyes fell on these lines, and he
read them aloud to judge better of their effect:--

"At length I saw a lady within call. Stiller than chisell'd marble,
standing there; A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely
fair."

He marked the verse, and turning the page read the stanza beginning,--

"O sweet pale Margaret,
O rare pale Margaret."

He weighed the passage a moment, and decided that it would not do. Mrs.
Dixon was the palest lady he expected at the ball, and she was of a
rather ruddy complexion, and of lively disposition and buxom build. So
he ran over the leaves until his eye rested on the description of Queen
Guinevere:--

"She seem'd a part of joyous Spring:
A gown of grass-green silk she wore,
Buckled with golden clasps before;
A light-green tuft of plumes she bore
Closed in a golden ring.

. . . . . . . . . .

"She look'd so lovely, as she sway'd
The rein with dainty finger-tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips."

As Mr. Ryder murmured these words audibly, with an appreciative thrill,
he heard the latch of his gate click, and a light footfall sounding on
the steps. He turned his head, and saw a woman standing before the door.

She was a little woman, not five feet tall, and proportioned to her
height. Although she stoo