Before Maud had been many weeks with the Vernons there was a Garrison Ball, and at this it was fated that she should make her first public appearance in Dustypore society. That night was certainly the most eventful and exciting one that she had ever passed. To wake and find one's self famous is no doubt an agreeable sensation; but to put on for the first time in one's life a lovely ball-dress, bright, cloudlike, ambrosial—to be suddenly elevated to a pinnacle to receive the homage of mankind—to exercise a pleasant little capricious tyranny in the selection of partners—to be seized upon by one anxious adorer after another, all striving to please, each with a little flattering tale of his own—to read in a hundred eyes that one is very pretty—to find at last a partner who, from some mysterious reason, is not like other partners, but just perfection—to know that one's views about him are entirely reciprocated—it was, as Maud, on going to bed, acknowledged to herself with a sigh, which was half fatigue and half the utterance of an over-excited temperament, too much enjoyment for a single human soul to carry!

In the first place, Sutton, all ablaze with medals, tall, majestic, impressive, and as Maud had come to think with Felicia, undeniably handsome, had begged her in the morning to keep several dances for him. The prospect of this among other things had put her in a flutter. She would have preferred some of the ensigns. It seemed a sort of alarming familiarity. Could such a being valse and bend, as ordinary mortals do, to the commonplace movements of a mere quadrille? It was one thing to go spinning round with another school-girl, under the superintendence of Madame Millville, to the accompaniment of her husband's violin: but to be taken possession of by a being like Sutton—to have to write his name down for two valses and a set of Lancers—to know that in five minutes one will be whirling about under his guidance—the idea was delightful, but not without a touch of awe! Sutton, however, quieted these alarms by dancing in a rather ponderous and old-fashioned manner, and finally tearing her dress with his spur. Maud had accordingly to be carried off, in order that the damage might be repaired; and—her mind somewhat lightened by the sense of responsibility discharged and the ice satisfactorily broken—looked forward to the rest of the evening with ummingled pleasure. While her torn dress was being set to rights she scanned her card, saw Sutton's name duly registered for his promised dances, and made up her mind, as she compared him with the rest, that there was no one in the room she liked one-half as well.

But then she had not danced with Desvœux; and Desvœux was now waiting at the door and imploring her not to curtail the rapture of a valse, the first notes of which had already sounded. Desvœux's dancing, Maud speedily acknowledged to herself, bore about the same relation to Sutton's that her Arab pony's canter did to the imposing movements of the latter gentleman's first charger. His tongue, too, seemed as nimble as his feet. He was in the highest possible spirits, and the careless, joyous extravagance of his talk struck a sympathetic chord in his companion's nature.

'There!' he cried, as the last notes of the music died away and he brought his companion to a standstill at a comfortable sofa, 'Such a valse as that is a joy for ever—a thing to dream of, is it not? Some ladies, you know, Miss Vernon, dance in epic poems, some in the sternest prose—Carlyle, for instance—some in sweet-flowing, undulating, rippling lyrics: Yours is (what shall I say?) an ode of Shelley's or a song from Tennyson, a smile from Paradise! Where can you have learnt it?'

'Monsieur Millville taught us all at my school,' said Maud, prosaically mindful of the many battles she had had in former days with that gentleman: 'a horrid little wizened Frenchman, with a fiddle. We all hated him. He was always going on at me about my toes.'

'Your toes!' cried Desvœux, with effusion: 'He wanted to adore them, as I do—sweet points where all the concentrated poetry of your being gathers. Put out that fairy little satin shoe and let me adore them too!'

'No, thank you!' cried Maud, greatly taken aback at so unexpected a request, gathering her feet instinctively beneath her; 'it's not the fashion!'

'You will not?' Desvœux said, with a tone of sincere disappointment. 'Is not that unkind? Suppose it was the fashion to cover up your hands in tulle and satin and never to show them?'

'Then,' Maud said, laughing, 'you would not be able to adore them either; as it is, you see, you may worship them as much as you please!'

'I have been worshipping them all the evening. They are lovely—a little pair of sprites.'