Turning to her companion, she whispers something to him in a low tone, and then she laughs,—a soft, rippling laugh, full of mirth and music.
"There go the chimes again," says Mr. Potts, who has just come up, alluding to Molly's little cruel outburst of merriment. "I never saw Miss Massereene in such good form as she is in to-night. Oh!"—with a suppressed yawn—"'what a day we're 'aving!' I wish it were all to come over again."
"Plantagenet, you grow daily more dissipated," says Cecil Stafford, severely. "A little boy like you should be in your bed hours ago; instead of which you have been allowed to sit up until half-past four, and——"
"And still I am not 'appy?' How could I be when you did me out of that solitary dance you promised me? I really believed, when I asked you with such pathos in the early part of the evening to keep that one green spot in your memory for me, you would have done so."
"Did I forget you?" remorsefully. "Well, don't blame me. Mr. Lowry would keep my card for me, and, as a natural consequence, it was lost. After that, how was it possible for me to keep to my engagements?"
"I think it was a delightful ball," Molly says, with perhaps a shade too much empressement. "I never in all my life enjoyed myself so well."
"Lucky you," says Cecil. "Had I been allowed I should perhaps have been happy too; but"—with a glance at Stafford, who is looking the very personification of languid indifference—"when people allow their 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.