r undeniable grace.
Then too, Mr. Bennet, like Mr. Watts, knew Ross rather well, and he
wanted to be nice to Ross's daughter for various reasons. And last, but
not least, her ingenuous admiration of his own attractive person amused
Mr. Bennet more than he had been amused for a long while.

There was one last wild romp of a dance as an encore from the more
good-natured members of the orchestra, while the other musicians packed
their instruments, and then the First Real Party was only a thing to be
remembered.

Mr. Bennet made a special point of telling Arethusa good-night, and he
bent lingeringly over her hand as he did so, in his own inimitable way
of making it seem the very hardest parting he had ever had to make.

"I'm coming to see you some time, if I may," he said.

Her heart almost stopped beating at this. Then it raced on again to
beat in quick, little jumps. She lifted young, frankly adoring eyes to
the handsome man before her, and quite suddenly, without a word of real
warning, Arethusa knew....

She had _fallen in love_!

But it was not as she had fallen in love with Elinor, and it was not
such love as she gave Ross or Miss Asenath or even Timothy; for this
was without doubt the Miracle she had read about so many times under
the hollow tree in Miss Asenath's Woods. And it had come just as she
had always dreamed it would come, with a Hand-clasp and a Glance.

The hand in Mr. Bennet's holding trembled and grew cold before Arethusa
could withdraw it. Her misbehaving heart almost interfered with her
breathing. But the world around them went on as casually unaware of the
Miracle as if neither Arethusa nor Mr. Bennet existed, when it should
surely have been hushed into a Startled Silence by What had happened.

All through that night, Arethusa wandered with a tall man of
long-lashed hazel eyes of marvelous beauty, through a country which was
a Country of Rare Delight, even if only a Country of Dreaming. And as
they wandered, he bent his head again and again to whisper, in a deep
drawling voice, Words which bore a remarkable resemblance to some of
the lyrics of the early nineteenth-century poets, and the pages of
conversation in Arethusa's much read romances.

What though the Gentleman of the Dream wore a modern suit of
commonplace evening clothes, instead of Ruffles and a Velvet Coat and
Satin Small-clothes? It did not prevent, in the Dream, his pressing his
Hand to his Heart at moments when it was logical t