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FTER the dance Frank Hillhouse took Dolly home in one of the drenched and bespattered hacks. The Barclay residence was one of the best-made and largest in town. It was an old-style Southern frame-house, painted white, and had white-columned verandas on two sides. It was in the edge of the town, and had an extensive lawn in front and almost a little farm behind.

Dolly's mother had never forgotten that she was once a girl herself, and she took the most active interest in everything pertaining to Dolly's social life. On occasions like the one just described she found it impossible to sleep till her daughter returned, and then she slipped up-stairs, and made the girl tell all about it while she was disrobing. To-night she was more alert and wide-awake than usual. She opened the front door for Dolly and almost stepped on the girl's heels as she followed her up-stairs.

"Was it nice?" she asked.

"Yes, very," Dolly replied. Reaching her room, she turned up the low-burning lamp, and, standing before a mirror, began to take some flowers out of her hair. Mrs. Barclay sat down on the edge of the high-posted mahogany bed and raised one of her bare feet and held it in her hand. She was a thin woman with iron-gray hair, and about fifty years of age. She looked as if she were cold; but, for reasons of her own, she was not willing for Dolly to remark it.

"Who was there?" she asked.

"Oh, everybody."

"Is that so? I thought a good many would stay away because it was a bad night; but I reckon they are as anxious to go as we used to be. Then you all did have the hacks?"

"Yes, they had the hacks." There was a pause, during which one pair of eyes was fixed rather vacantly on the image in the mirror; the other pair, full of impatient inquiry, rested alternately on the image and its maker.

"I don't believe you had a good time," broke the silence, in a rising, tentative tone.

"Yes, I did, mother."

"Then what's the matter with you?" Mrs. Barclay's voice rang with impatience. "I never saw you act like you do to-night, never in my life."

"I didn't know anything was wrong with me, mother."

"You act queer; I declare you do," asserted Mrs. Barclay. "You generally have a lot to say. Have you and Frank had a falling out?"

Dolly gave her shoulders a sudden shrug of contempt.

"No, we got along as well as we ever did."

"I thought maybe he was a little mad because you wouldn't dance to-night; but surely he's got enough sense to see that you oughtn't to insult brother Dill-beck that way when he's visiting our house and everybody knows what he thinks about dancing."

"No, he thought I did right about it," said Dolly.

"Then what in the name of common-sense is the matter with you, Dolly? You can' t pull the wool over my eyes, and you needn't try it."

Dolly faced about suddenly.

"I reckon you 'll sit there all night unless I tell you all about it," she said, sharply. "Mother, Alan Bishop was there."

"You don't say!"

"Yes, and asked me to let him take me to church to-morrow evening."

"Oh, he did?"

"Yes, and as I didn't want father to insult him, I—"

"You told him what your pa said?"

"No, I just told him father didn't want me to receive him any more. Heaven knows, that was enough."

"Well, that was the best thing for you to do." Mrs. Barclay took a deep breath, as if she were inhaling a delicious perfume. "It's much better than to have him plunge in here some day and have your father break out like he does in his rough way. What did Alan say?"

"He said very little; but he looked it. You ought to have seen him. Frank came up just about that time and invited me to have some ice-cream, and I had to leave him. He was as white as a sheet. He had made an engagement with me to sit out a dance, and he didn't come in the room again till that dance was called, and then he didn't even mention it. He acted so peculiarly, I could see it was nearly killing him, but he wouldn't let me bring up the subject again. I came near doing it; but he always steered round it."

"He's a sensible young man," declared Mrs. Barclay. "Any one can see that by looking at him. He's not responsible for his father's foolhardy venture, but it certainly leaves him in a bad fix as a marrying man. He's had bad luck, and he must put up with the consequences. There are plenty of girls who have no money or prospects who would be glad to have him, but—"

"Mother," broke in Dolly, as if she had been listening to her own troubled thoughts rather than her mother's words; "he didn't act as if he wanted to see me alone. The other couples who had engagements to talk during that dance were sitting in windows and out-of-the-way corners, but he kept me right where I was, and was as carefully polite as if we had just been introduced. I was sorry for him and mad at the same time. I could have pulled his ears."

"He's sensible, very sensible," said Mrs. Barclay, in a tone of warm admiration. "A man like that ought to get along, and I reckon he will do well some day."

"But, mother," said Dolly, her rich, ............