"But you _are_ dancing. You've been dancing ever since you came in. I've watched you. Mightn't you just as well be dancing with me, as dancing by yourself?"

She laughed and shook her head, but her foot continued to pat the time, and her eyes followed the swaying couples that swung past.

"What's the Doctor's objection?" Mr. Horton urged.

"He thinks it's undignified for married women to dance, and I guess I do, too, only--" Miss Lady sighed,--"you see, I keep forgetting that I _am_ a married woman!"

"You certainly make other people want to forget it," then his eyes dropped before the childlike candor of her gaze. "Come now, Mrs. Queerington, aren't you taking matrimony a little seriously?"

"Perhaps I am, but I'm new, you know, and I've an awful lot to learn."

"Hasn't it ever occurred to you that the Doctor might have something to learn?"

"No," she said brightly, "he knows everything. I sometimes wish he didn't. I'd be proud if I could teach him even _that_ much!" and she measured off the amount on the tip of her little finger.

"Perhaps he isn't as good a pupil as you are. You should take him to see 'Harnessing a Husband,' at the Ardmore this week."

"A play? I'd love to go to the theater just once."

"You've never been? How extraordinary! Come with Mrs. Horton and me on Friday night and let us share your first thrill."

"May I?" Miss Lady began eagerly, then checking herself, "I'm afraid the Doctor doesn't care much about the modern stage. He used to enjoy seeing the great actors, but he says the plays they put on now bore him fearfully. Mayn't we come to call sometime instead?"

"As you like," said Mr. Horton, shrugging, "but I hope you realize that you are spoiling that learned husband of yours. Instead of adapting yourself to him, make him adapt himself to you. Come now, isn't it about time for you to reform? Why not begin by finishing this dance with me?"

Still she laughed and shook her head. "It isn't that I don't want to! I'd rather dance than do anything in the world--except ride horseback."

"I might have known you were a horsewoman. Do you ride much?"

"Not now."

"The Doctor doesn't care for it, I suppose?"

She flashed a questioning glance at him, then she looked away:

"No," she said, "he doesn't care for it."

Cropsie Decker, who had been hovering in her vicinity, now came up and claimed the next number.

"There's a bully little corner in the conservatory where we can sit out this waltz. You won't mind if I carry her off, Mr. Horton?"

"Not if she takes to heart some of the wise things I've been telling her," said Horton, looking at her through his narrow eyes and pulling at his small, fair mustache. "Au revoir, Madame Beaux Yeux!"

Miss Lady did not move from the spot where he left her. Out under the palms in the hall, the orchestra was beginning one of Strauss' most distracting waltzes; her fingers tapped the time. Suddenly she held out her hand to Cropsie.

"I can't stand it another minute! I've got to dance once if I never dance again!"

Every eye in the ballroom followed the slender figure, as it circled in and out among the throng. Miss Lady danced with the grace and abandonment of a child. She had given herself utterly to the joy of the moment. She was letting herself go for the first time since her marriage, following the glad impulse of her heart, and dancing as a Bacchante might have danced alone on a moonlight night in some forest glade.

When at last the music stopped Cropsie drew her into the conservatory.

"Here, come around this palm, quick! They'll all be after you for the next dance. Gerald Ivy is charging around now looking for you, and so is Mr. Horton. Sit there in the window and cool off!"

She sank laughing and breathless on the window sill. All the exhilaration of the dance was in her eyes, her lips were parted, her cheeks flushed, and a strand of loosened hair fell across her shoulder.

It was at this moment that wheels sounded on the driveway below, caused her to lean idly out to see who was coming. A wagon stopped at the side entrance, and a man alighted. Uncle Jimpson's voice was heard asking a question, then came the other man's voice, in quick, incisive answer.

Miss Lady, sitting motionless, looking down, turned suddenly from the window. The color had left her face and her hand trembled visibly against the curtain.

"What's the matter?" cried Cropsie; "are you ill? Did you dance too long?"

"It's nothing, I'm all right. That is I will be--"

"Can't I get you some water, or an ice, or call Mrs. Sequin?"

"No, no, please! It's nothing. I'll slip off to the dressing-room until I feel better. I can go through here up the side stairs."

"Wait, I'll go with you. You are as white as if you'd seen a ghost!"

But before he could join her she had disappeared into mysterious regions where he dared not follow.

CHAPTER XVII

During the course of that Christmas night, there was one member of the Sequin household who failed to thrill with the holiday spirit, and whose depression steadily increased as the evening wore on. The great occasion of which Uncle Jimpson had dreamed all his life, had at last arisen, and instead of being allowed to rise with it, and prove his indisputable right to butlerhood, he had been detailed to drive back and forth to the station over that same humdrum Cane Run Road that he and Old John had helped to wear away for the past quarter of a century!

To be sure, a neat depot wagon and a spirited young sorrel had replaced the ancient buggy and the apostolic nag, but these fell far short of Uncle Jimpson's dreams. A coach and four at that moment would not have compensated him for the fact that a complaisant, red-headed furnaceman, a "po' white trash" arrived but yesterday, was being allowed to pass the tray that by all rights of precedence belonged to him.

Waiting impatiently at the station for the train that was to bring the elusive ices which he had been pursuing all evening, he at last had the satisfaction of seeing the small engine crawl out of the darkness, and come to a wheezing halt.

So engrossed were the conductor and brakeman and Uncle Jimpson in safely depositing the freezers on the platform, that no one noticed a passenger who had alighted. In fact, it was not until Uncle Jimpson heard Mrs. Sequin's name that he paused from his labor and looked up.

The stranger was a young, well-built man, wearing a long, shaggy overcoat, and a cap of a foreign cut that excited the immediate envy of the brake-man. The bag and the suit case which he carried were covered with foreign labels, and he had the air of a person who is suddenly dropped down in a strange place and doesn't quite know what to do with himself.

"You say you want to git up to Mrs. Sequin's to-night?" Uncle Jimpson eyed the bags suspiciously. "'Scuse me, sir, but you ain't sellin' nothin', is you?"

The laugh that greeted this was so spontaneous, that Uncle Jimpson hastened to apologize: "I nebber thought you wuz, only we wasn't lookin' fer no railroad company, an' I 'lowed you didn't look lak you wuz comin' to de party."

"What party?" asked the man, his look of amusement giving place to one of dismay.

"Our-alls party. We's havin' a ball an' a house-warmin'. You must be comin' fum a long ways off not to be hearin' 'bout hit!"

"You mean the Sequins are having a party, tonight?"

"Yas, sir."

"But aren't they expecting me? Didn't they get my telegram?"

"I dunno, sir. Dey nebber said nothin' to me."

The stranger stood with feet apart, watch in hand, and a grim expression on the only part of his face visible between his cap and his upturned collar.

"What time is the next train back to town?"

"Dey ain't none, 'ceptin' de special, what's hired to take de party back to town. Dat goes 'bout two o'clock."

"I'll wait for it," said the stranger, flinging his bag against the waiting-room door and beginning to pace restlessly up and down the snow-covered platform.