ome again; to send me back to the changed and emptied school-room;
to Algy's bills and morosities; to the wearing pricks of father's little
pin-point tyrannies.

I have lit the candles, and am looking at myself in the cheval-glass.
What has become of my beauty, pray? The powder is shaken from my hair;
it no longer rises in a white and comely pile; the motion of dancing has
loosened and tossed it; it has a look of dull, gray dishevelment. The
rouge has almost disappeared; melted away, or sunk in; there never was a
great deal of it, never the generous abundance that adorned Mr. Parker's
face. I cannot help laughing, even now, as I think of the round red
smouch that so artlessly ornamented each of his cheeks.

I neither ring for my maid, nor attempt to undress myself. I either keep
walking restlessly to and fro, or I sit by the casement, while the cold
little wind lifts my dusty hair, or blows against my hot, stiff eyes; or
I stand stupidly before the glass; bitterly regarding the ruins of my
one night's fairness. I do not know for how long; it must be hours, but
I could not say how many.

The fiddles' shrill voices grow silent at last; the bounding and
stamping ceases; the departing carriage-wheels grind and crunch on the
gravel drive. I shall not have much longer to wait; he will be coming
soon now. But there is yet another interval. In ungovernable impatience,
I open my door and listen. It seems to me that there reaches me from the
hall, the sound of voices in loud and angry altercation; it is too far
off for me to distinguish to whom they belong. Then there is silence
again, and then at last--at last Roger comes. I hear his foot along the
passage, and run to the door to intercept him, on his way to his
dressing-room. He utters an exclamation of surprise on seeing me.

"Not in bed yet? Not undressed? They told me that you were tired and had
gone to bed hours ago!"

"Did they?"

I can say only these two little words. I am panting so, as if I had run
hard. We are both in the room now, and the door is shut. I suppose I
look odd; wild and gray and haggard through the poor remains of my
rouge.

"You are late," I say presently, in a voice of low constraint, "are not
you? everybody went some time ago."

"I know," he answers, with a slight accent of irritation; "it is Algy's
fault! I do not know what has come to that boy; he hardly seems in his
right mind to-night; he has been trying to pick a quarrel with Parker,
bec