waltz?" Sir Penthony asks again, this time very
coldly.

"Not this one; perhaps a little later on."

"As you please, of course," returns he, as, with a frown and an inward
determination never to ask her again, he walks away.

In the ball-room he meets Luttrell, evidently on the lookout for a
missing partner.

"Have you seen Miss Massereene?" he asks instantly. "I am engaged to
her, and can see her nowhere."

"Try one of those nests for flirtation," replies Stafford, bitterly,
turning abruptly away, and pointing toward the room he has just
quitted.

But Luttrell goes in a contrary direction. Through one conservatory
after another, through ball-room, supper-room, tea-room, he searches
without success. There is no Molly to be seen anywhere.

"She has forgotten our engagement," he thinks, and feels a certain pang
of disappointment that it should be so. As he walks, rather dejectedly,
into a last conservatory, he is startled to find Marcia there alone,
gazing with silent intentness out of the window into the garden
beneath.

As he approaches she turns to meet his gaze. She is as pale as death,
and her dark eyes are full of fire. The fingers of her hand twitch
convulsively.

"You are looking for Eleanor?" she says, intuitively, her voice low,
but vibrating with some hidden emotion. "See, you will find her there."

She points down toward the garden through the window where she has been
standing, and moves away. Impelled by the strangeness of her manner,
Luttrell follows her direction, and, going over to the window, gazes
out into the night.

It is a brilliant moonlight night; the very stars shine with redoubled
glory; the chaste Diana, riding high in the heavens, casts over "tower
and stream" and spreading parks "a flood of silver sheen;" the whole
earth seems bright as gaudy day.

Beneath, in the shrubberies, pacing to and fro, are Molly and Philip
Shadwell, evidently in earnest conversation. Philip at least seems
painfully intent and eager. They have stopped, as if by one impulse,
and now he has taken her hand. She hardly rebukes him; her hand lies
passive within his; and now,--_now_, with a sudden movement, he
has placed his arm around her waist.

"Honor or no honor," says Luttrell, fiercely, "I will see it out with
her now."

Drawing a deep breath, he folds his arms and leans against the window,
full of an agonized determination to know the worst.

Molly has put up her hand and laid it on Philip's ches