"If he molests you badly, I promise to
interfere."

Molly steps on to the balcony, and, looking down, awaits the slow and
languid approach of her grandfather. Just as he arrives beneath her she
bends over until he, attracted by her presence, looks up.

She is laughing down upon him, bent on conquest, and has a blood-red
rose in one hand. She waves it slightly to and fro, as though
uncertain, as though dallying about giving utterance to some thought
that pines for freedom.

The old man, pausing, looks up at her, and, looking, sighs,--perhaps
for his dead youth, perhaps because she so much resembles her mother,
disowned and forgotten.

"Have a rose, grandpapa?" says Molly, stooping still farther over the
iron railings, her voice sweet and fresh as the dead and gone
Eleanor's. As she speaks she drops the flower, and he dexterously, by
some fortuitous chance, catches it.

"Well done!" cries she, with a gay laugh, clapping her hands, feeling
half surprised, wholly amused, at his nimbleness. "Yet stay, grandpapa,
do not go so soon. I--have a favor to ask of you."

"Well?"

"We have been discussing something delightful for the past five
minutes,--something downright delicious; but we can do nothing without
you. Will you help us, grandpapa? will you?" She asks all this with the
prettiest grace, gazing down undaunted into the sour old face raised to
hers.

"Why are you spokeswoman?" demands he, in a tone that makes the deeply
attentive Cecil within groan aloud.

"Well--because--I really don't believe I know why, except that I chose
to be so. But grant me this, my first request. Ah! do, now, grandpapa."

The sweet coaxing of the Irish "Ah!" penetrates even this withered old
heart.

"What is this wonderful thing you would have me do?" asks he, some of
the accumulated verjuice of years disappearing from his face; while
Lady Stafford, from behind the curtain, looks on trembling with fear
for the success of her scheme, and Marcia listens and watches with
envious rage.

"We want you to--give a ball," says Molly, boldly, with a little gasp,
keeping her large eyes fixed in eager anxiety upon his face, while her
pretty parted lips seem still to entreat. "Say 'yes' to me, grandpapa."

How to refuse so tender a pleading? How bring the blank that a "No"
must cause upon her _riante_, lovely face?

"Suppose I say I cannot?" asks he; but his tone has altered
wonderfully, and there is an expression that is almost amiable upo