ed since his Eton days to lay violent hands on
Douglas whenever they met. She and her husband had lately agreed to live
apart, and she was now pursuing amusement wherever it was to be had. A
certain Magdalen athlete was at the moment her particular friend, and
she had brought down a sister to keep her in countenance. She had no
intention, indeed, of making scandal, and Douglas Falloden was a
convenient string to her bow.

Falloden was quite aware of the situation. But it suited him to dance
with Mrs. Glendower, and to dance with her a great deal. He and
Constance exchanged greetings; he went through the form of asking her to
dance, knowing very well that she would refuse him; and then, for the
rest of the evening, when he was not dancing with Mrs. Glendower, he was
standing about, "giving himself airs," as Alice repeated to her mother,
and keeping a sombre watch on Constance.

"My dear--what has happened to Connie!" said Mrs. Hooper to Alice in
bewilderment. Lord Meyrick had just good-naturedly taken Aunt Ellen into
supper, brought her back to the ballroom, and bowed himself off,
bursting with conscious virtue, and saying to himself that Constance
Bledlow must now give him at least two more dances.

Mrs. Hooper had found Alice sitting solitary, and rather drooping.
Nobody had offered her supper; Herbert Pryce was not at the ball; her
other friends had not showed her any particular attention, and her
prettiness had dribbled away, like a bright colour washed out by rain.
Her mother could not bear to see her--and then to look at Connie across
the room, surrounded by all those silly young men, and wearing the
astonishing jewels that were the talk of the ball, and had only been
revealed to Mrs. Hooper's bewildered gaze, when the girl threw off her
wraps in the cloak-room.

Alice answered her mother's question with an irritable shake of the
head, meant to indicate that Connie was nothing to her.

Whereupon Mrs. Hooper settled herself carefully in the chair which she
meant to keep for the rest of the evening, smoothing the bright folds of
the new dress over her knee. She was much pleased with the new dress;
and, of course, it would be paid for some time. But she was almost
forgetting it in the excitement of Connie's behaviour.

"She has never danced once with Mr. Falloden!" she whispered in Alice's
ear. "It has been all Mr. Radowitz. And the talk!" She threw up her
hands maliciously.

"It's the way they dance--that mak