I'll ask
her to be my wife to-night, or that inconceivable idiot, Lord Gilbert
Penryhn will do it to-morrow."

He sauntered over to the group, not at all insensible to the quick,
bright smile and flitting flush with which Miss Jocyln welcomed him.

"I believe this waltz is mine, Miss Jocyln. Very sorry to break upon
your _tete-a-tete_, Penryhn, but necessity knows no law."

A moment and they were floating down the whirling tide of the dance,
with the wild, sweet waltz music swelling and sounding, and Miss
Jocyln's perfumed hair breathing fragrance around him, the starry face
and dark, dewy eyes, downcast a little, in a happy tremor. The cold,
still look of fixed pride seemed to melt out of her face, and an
exquisite rosy light came and went in its place, making her more lovely
than ever; and Sir Rupert saw and understood it all, with a little
complacent thrill of satisfaction.

They waltzed out of the ball-room into a conservatory of exquisite
blossom, where tropic plants of gorgeous hues, and plashing fountains,
under the white light of alabaster lamps, made a sort of garden of Eden.
There were orange and myrtle trees oppressing the warm air with their
sweetness, and through the open, French windows came the soft, misty
moonlight, and the saline wind. There they stopped, looking out at the
pale glory of the night, and there Sir Rupert, about to ask the supreme
question of his life, and with his heart beginning to plunge against
his side, opened conversation with the usual brilliancy in such cases.

"You look fatigued, Miss Jocyln. These great balls are great bores after
all."

Miss Jocyln laughed frankly. She was of a nature far more impassioned
than his, and she loved him; and she felt thrilling through every nerve
in her body the prescience of what he was going to say; but for all
that, being a woman, she had the best of it now.

"I am not at all fatigued," she said; "and I like it. I don't think
balls are bores--like this, I mean; but then, certainly, my experience
is very limited. How lovely the night is! Look at the moonlight, yonder,
on the water, a sheet of silvery glory. Does it not recall Sorrento, and
the exquisite Sorrentine landscape--that moonlight on the sea? Are you
not inspired, sir artist?"

She lifted a flitting, radiant glance, a luminous smile, and then the
star-like face drooped again--and the white hands took to reckless
breaking off sweet sprays of myrtle.

"My inspiration is nearer,"