With a bow and a smile, Clarence received on his arm the fair girl. He felt for her a tenderer regard than had heretofore warmed his heart, as he strolled through the rooms and listened to her sweet, penetrating voice. And whenever he turned and looked her in the face, he saw that in the expression of her eyes which he had never marked before—something of tenderness that made his own heart beat with a quicker motion. As they drew near the dancers, they observed Sheldon with Melvina leaning on his arm, and two or three others, engaged in making up another cotillion.
"We want but one more couple, and here they are," said Sheldon, as Clarence and Caroline came up.
"Will you join this set?" asked Clarence, in a low tone.
"Not this one," she replied.
"Miss Gay does not wish to dance now," her companion said, and they moved away.
But the cotillion was speedily formed without them, and the dance proceeded.
Half an hour after, while Henry Clarence and Caroline were sitting on a lounge, engaged in close conversation, Sheldon came up, and bowing in his most graceful manner, and, with his blandest smile, said,
"Can I have the pleasure of dancing with Miss Gay, this evening?"
"No, sir," was the quiet, firm reply of the maiden, while she looked him steadily in the face.
Sheldon turned hurriedly away, for he understood the rebuke, the first he had yet met with in the refined, fashionable, virtuous society of one of the largest of the Atlantic cities.