For a full minute they thus hesitate, looking into each other's eyes;
then the anger fades from Stafford's face, and he whispers, eagerly,
tenderly:

"Good-night, my----"

"Friend," murmurs back her ladyship, decisively, leaning yet a little
farther over the banisters.

Then she kisses her hand to him and drops at his feet the rose that has
lain on her bosom all the evening, and, with a last backward glance and
smile, flits away from him up the darkened staircase and vanishes.

"I shall positively lose my heart to her if I don't take care," thinks
the young man, ruefully, and very foolishly, considering how long ago
it is since that misfortune has befallen him. But we are ever slow to
acknowledge our own defeats. His eyes are fixed upon the flower at his
feet.

"No, I do not want her flowers," he says, with a slight frown, pushing
it away from him disdainfully. "It was a mere chance my getting it. Any
other fellow in my place at the moment would have been quite as
favored,--nay, beyond doubt more so. I will not stoop for it."

With his dignity thus forced to the front, he walks the entire length
of the hall, his arms folded determinedly behind him, until he reaches
a door at the upper end.

Here he pauses and glances back almost guiltily. Yes, it is still
there, the poor, pretty yellow blossom that has been so close to her,
now sending forth its neglected perfume to an ungrateful world.

It is cruel to leave it there alone all night, to be trodden on,
perhaps, in the morning by an unappreciative John or Thomas, or, worse
still, to be worn by an appreciative James. Desecration!

"'Who hesitates is lost,'" quotes Stafford, aloud, with an angry laugh
at his own folly, and, walking deliberately back again, picks up the
flower and presses it to his lips.

"I thought that little speech applied only to us poor women," says a
soft voice above him, as, to his everlasting chagrin, Cecil's
mischievous, lovable face peers down at him from the gallery overhead.
"Have another flower, Sir Penthony? You seem fond of them."

She throws a twin-blossom to the one he holds on to his shoulder as she
speaks with very accurate aim.

"It was yours," stammers Sir Penthony, utterly taken aback.

"_So_ it was,"--with an accent of affected surprise,--"which makes
your behavior all the more astonishing. Well, do not stand there
kissing it all night, or you will catch cold, and then--what
_should_ I do?"

"What?"

"Die of grief,