ouse, as if they had been
familiar to him for years, and to launch out again into praises
of her father and mother. Mary looked straight up in his face,
and, though he did not meet her eye, his manner was so composed,
that she began to doubt her own senses, and then he suddenly
changed the subject to Oxford and the commemoration, and by the
end of the set could flatter himself that he had quite dispelled
the cloud which had looked so threatening.

Mary had a great success that evening. She took part in every
dance, and might have had two or three partners at once, if they
would have been of any use to her. When, at last, Mr. Porter
insisted that he would keep his horses no longer, St. Cloud and
the guardsman accompanied her to the door, and were assiduous in
the cloak room. Young men are pretty much like a drove of sheep;
anyone who takes a decided line in certain matters, is sure to
lead all the rest.

The guardsman left the ball in the firm belief, as he himself
expressed it, that Mary "had done his business for life;" and,
being quite above concealment, persisted in singing her praises
over his cigar at the club, to which many of the dancers
adjourned; and from that night she became the fashion with the
set in which St. Cloud lived.

The more enterprising of them, he amongst the foremost, were soon
intimate in Mr. Porter's house, and spoke well of his dinners.
Mr. Porter changed his hour of riding in the park at their
suggestion, and now he and his daughter were always sure of
companions. Invitations multiplied, for Mary's success was so
decided, that she floated her astonished parents into a whirl of
balls and breakfasts. Mr. Porter and his wife were flattered
themselves, and pleased to see their daughter admired and
enjoying herself; and in the next six weeks Mary had the
opportunity of getting all the good and the bad which a girl of
eighteen can extract from a London season.

The test was a severe one. Two months of constant excitement, of
pleasure-seeking pure and simple, will not leave people just as
they found them; and Mary's habits, and thoughts, and ways of
looking at and judging of people and things, were much changed by
the time that the gay world melted away from Mayfair and
Belgravia, and it was time for all respectable people to pull
down the blinds and shut the shutters of their town houses.

CHAPTER XXXIX

WHAT CAME OF THE NIGHT WATCH

The last knot of the dancers came out of the club