"I'm not going to let Hughie see me propping a wall this dance," said Joan to herself with decision. "He would think I had been keeping it for him. What shall I do? Go back to the cloakroom? No; it is always full of girls without partners pretending they've just dropped in to get sewn up. I'll go to the Mayor's parlour and sit there. It's never used at these dances."
Making a mental entry on the debit side of her missing partner's ledger, Miss Gaymer retired unostentatiously from the ballroom, and turned down an unlighted passage, which was blocked by a heavy screen marked "Private," and encumbered with rolls of carpet and superfluous furniture.
The darkened passage was comfortably cool and peaceful after the blaze and turmoil of the field of action, and apparently had not been discovered by couples in search of seclusion. Joan was approaching the end, where she knew the door of the Mayor's parlour was situated, when she became aware of a certain subdued sound quite near her. It was a sound well calculated to catch the ear of one so tender-hearted as herself. Some one was sobbing, very wretchedly, in the darkness within a few feet of her.
Joan stopped short, a little frightened, and peered about her. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom, and presently she beheld a glimmer of white almost at her knee. The glimmer outlined itself into the form of a filmy ball-dress.
Joan tackled the situation with her usual promptitude.
"I say," she said, "what's the matter? Let me help you."
The sobbing ceased, and the white figure sat up with a start.
"If you don't mind," continued Joan, "I'm going to turn up this electric light."
There was a click, and the rays of a single and rather dusty incandescent lamp illuminated the scene, and with it the slender figure, seated forlornly on a roll of red carpet, of the little lady of the forget-me-nots.
Her face was flushed with sudden shame, for her shoulders were still heaving, and her cheeks glistened with tears, the which she dabbed confusedly with a totally inadequate scrap of pocket handkerchief.