tempers to get the better of them----" Here she pauses with an eloquent
sigh.

"I hope you are not alluding to me," says Lowry, who is at her elbow,
with a smile that awakes in Stafford a mild longing to strangle him.

"Oh, no!"--sweetly. "How could you think it? I am not ungrateful; and I
know how carefully you tried to make my evening a pleasant one."

"If I succeeded it is more than I dare hope for," returns he, in a low
tone, intended for her ears alone.

She smiles at him, and holds out her arm, that he may refasten the
eighth button of her glove that has mysteriously come undone. He rather
lingers over the doing of it. He is, indeed, strangely awkward, and
finds an unaccountable difficulty in inducing the refractory button to
go into its proper place.

"Shall we bivouac here for the remainder of the night, or seek our
beds?" asks Sir Penthony, impatiently. "I honestly confess the charms
of that eldest Miss Millbanks have completely used me up. Too much of a
good thing is good for nothing; and she _is_ tall. Do none of the
rest of you feel fatigue? I know women's passion for conquest is not
easily satiated,"--with a slight sneer--"but at five o'clock in the
morning one might surely call a truce."

They agree with him, and separate, even the tardiest guest having
disappeared by this time, with a last assurance of how intensely they
have enjoyed their evening; though when they reach their chambers a few
of them give way to such despair and disappointment as rather gives the
lie to their expressions of pleasure.

Poor Molly, in spite of her false gayety,--put on to mask the wounded
pride, the new sensation of blankness that fills her with
dismay,--flings herself upon her bed and cries away all the remaining
hours that rest between her and her maid's morning visit.

"Alas! how easily things go wrong:
A sigh too much or a kiss too long."

For how much less--for the mere suspicion of a kiss--have things gone
wrong with her? How meagre is the harvest she has gathered in from all
her anticipated pleasure, how poor a fruition has been hers!

Now that she and her lover are irrevocably separated, she remembers,
with many pangs of self-reproach, how tender and true and honest he has
proved himself in all his dealings with her; and, though she cannot
accuse herself of actual active disloyalty toward him, a hidden voice
reminds her how lightly and with what persistent carelessness she
accepted all his love,