and the
invitation accepted in Agnes's neatest hand. Even Catherine was roused
during the following ten days to a smiling indulgent interest in the
concerns of the workroom.

The evening came, and Lady Helen fetched the sisters in her carriage.
The ball was a magnificent affair. The house was one of historical
interest and importance, and all that the ingenuity of the present
could do to give fresh life and gayety to the pillared rooms, the
carved galleries and stately staircases of the past, had been done. The
ball-room, lined with Vandycks and Lelys, glowed softly with electric
light; the picture-gallery had been banked with flowers and carpeted
with red, and the beautiful dresses of the women trailed up and down it,
challenging the satins of the Netschers and the Terburgs on the walls.

Rose's card was soon full to overflowing. The young men present were of
the smartest, and would not willingly have bowed the knee to a nobody,
however pretty. But Lady Helen's devotion, the girl's reputation as a
musician, and her little nonchalant disdainful ways, gave her a kind of
prestige, which made her, for the time being at any rate, the equal of
anybody. Petitioners came and went away empty. Royalty was introduced
and smiled both upon the beauty and the beauty's delicate and becoming
dress; and still Rose, though a good deal more flushed and erect than
usual, and though flesh and blood could not resist the contagious
pleasure which glistened even in the eyes of that sage Agnes, was more
than half-inclined to say with the Preacher, that all was vanity.

Presently, as she stood waiting with her hand on her partner's arm,
before gliding into a waltz, she saw Mr. Flaxman opposite to her, and
with him a young debutante, in white tulle--a thin, pretty, undeveloped
creature, whose sharp elbows and timid movements, together with the
blushing enjoyment glowing so frankly from her face, pointed her out
as the school-girl of sweet sixteen, just emancipated, and trying her
wings.

'Ah, there is Lady Florence!' said her partner, a handsome young Hussar.
'This ball is in her honor, you know. She comes Out to-night. What,
another cousin? Really she keeps too much in the family!'

'Is Mr. Flaxman a cousin?'

The young man replied that he was, and then, in the intervals of
waltzing, went on to explain to her the relationships of many of the
people present, till the whole gorgeous affair began to seem to Rose a
mere family party. Mr. Fla