For some time they talk together, and then the duchess, fearing lest she may be keeping Mrs. Geoffrey from the common amusement of a , says, gently,—  
"You are not dancing much?"
 
"No," says Mona, shaking her head. "Not—not to-night. I shall soon."
 
"But why not to-night?" asks her Grace, who has noticed with curiosity the girl's refusal to dance with a young man in a hussar uniform, who had evidently made it the business of the evening to get introduced to her. Indeed, for an hour he had been feasting his eyes upon her fresh young beauty, and, having gone to infinite trouble to get presented to her, had been rewarded for his trouble by a little friendly smile, a shake of the head, and a distinct but refusal to join in the mazy dance.
 
"But why?" asks the duchess.
 
"Because"—with a quick blush—"I am not accustomed to dancing much. Indeed, I only learned to-day, and I might not be able to dance with every one."
 
"But you were not afraid to dance with Lauderdale, my son?" says the duchess, looking at her.
 
"I should never be afraid of him," returns Mona. "He has kind eyes. He is"—slowly and meditatively—"very like you."
 
The duchess laughs.
 
"He may be, of course," she says. "But I don't like to see a gay child like you sitting still. You should dance everything for the night."
 
"Well, as I say, I shall soon," returns Mona, brightening, "because Geoffrey has promised to teach me."
 
"If I were 'Geoffrey,' I think I shouldn't," says the duchess, meaningly.
 
"No?" raising an innocent face. "To much trouble, you think, perhaps. But, bless you, Geoffrey wouldn't mind that, so long as he was giving me pleasure." At which answer the duchess is very properly ashamed of both her self and her speech.
 
"I should think very few people would deem it a trouble to serve you," she says, graciously. "And perhaps, after all, you don't much care about dancing."
 
"Yes, I do," says Mona, truthfully. "Just now, at least. Perhaps"—sadly—"when I am your age I sha'n't."
 
This is a betise of the first water. And Lady Rodney, who can hear—and is listening to—every word, almost aloud.
 
The duchess, on the contrary, gives way to mirth, and, leaning back in her chair, laughs softly but with evident . Mona her , .
 
"What have I said?" she asks, half . "You laugh, yet I did not mean to be funny. Tell me what I said."
 
"It was only a little touch of nature," explains her Grace. "On that congratulate yourself. Nature is at a discount these days. And I—I love nature. It is so rare, a veritable philosopher's stone. You only told me what my glass tells me daily,—that I am not so young as I once was,—that, in fact, when sitting next pretty children like you, I am quite old."
 
"Did I say all that?" asks Mrs. Geoffrey, with wide eyes. "Indeed, I think you mistake. Old people have wrinkles, and they do not talk as you do. And when one is sweet to look at, one is never old."
 
To pay a compliment one must, I think, have at least a few drops of Irish blood in one's . As a rule, the happy-go-lucky people of Ireland can bring themselves to believe , and without , in almost anything for the time being,—can fling themselves heart and soul into their flatteries, and come out of them again as victors. And what other nation is capable of this? To make sweet phrases is one thing; to look as if you felt or meant them is quite another.
 
The little suspicion of blarney trips softly and naturally from Mona's tongue. She doesn't smile as she speaks, but looks with eyes full of flattering conviction at the but duchess. And in truth it may be that in Mona's eyes she is sweet to look at, in that she has been kind and tender towards her in her manner.
 
And the duchess is charmed, pleased beyond measure That faint touch about the wrinkles was the happiest of the happy. Only that morning her Grace, in spite of her unapproachable maid and care, had seen an additional line around her mouth that had warned her of youth's decline, and now to meet some one of this line is sweet to her.
 
"Then you didn't go out much in Ireland?" she says, thinking it more to change the conversation at this point.
 
"Out? Oh, ever so much," says Mrs. Geoffrey.
 
"Ah!" says the duchess, feeling puzzled. "Then perhaps they don't dance in Ireland.
 
"Yes, they do indeed, a great deal; at least I have heard so."
 
"Then I suppose when there you were too young to go out?" pursues the poor duchess, striving for information.
 
"I wasn't," says Mona: "I went out a great deal. All day long I was in the open air. That is what made my hands so brown last autumn."
 
"Were they brown?"
 
"As berries," says Mona, .
 
"At least they are a pretty shape," says the duchess glancing at the slim little hands lying gloved in their owner's lap. "But I don't think you quite understood the 'going out' in the light that I did. I mean, did you go much into society?"
 
"There wasn't much society to go into," says Mona, "and I was only fifteen when staying with Aunt Anastasia. She," , "made rather a grand match for us, you know." (Lady Rodney grinds her teeth, and tells herself she is on the point of fainting.) "She married the Provost of Trinity College; but I don't think he did her any good. She is the oddest old thing! Even to think of her now makes me laugh. You should have seen her," says Mrs. Geoffrey, leaning back in her chair, and giving way to her usual merry laugh, that rings like a of silver bells, "with her that had little curls all over it, and her big poke-bonnet like a coal-scuttle!"
 
"Well, I really wish I had seen her," says the good-humored duchess, smiling in sympathy, and beginning to feel herself more capable of thorough enjoyment than she has been for years. "Was she , as all Irish people are said to be?"
 
"Oh, dear, no," says Mona, with an shake of her lovely head. "She hadn't the least little bit of wit in her composition. She was as solemn as an Eng——I mean a Spaniard (they are all solemn, are they not?), and never made a joke in her life, but she was comic all the same." Then suddenly, "What a very pretty little woman that is over there, and what a lovely dress!"
 
"Very pretty indeed, and quite good taste and that. She's a Mrs. Lennox, and her husband is our master of the hounds. She is always quite correct in the matter of clothes." There is an awful reservation in her Grace's tone, which is quite lost upon Mona. "But she is by no means little in her own opinion, and in fact rather prides herself upon her—er—form generally," concludes the duchess, so far at a loss for a word as to be obliged to fall back upon slang.
 
"Her form!" says Mrs. Geoffrey, surveying the tiny Mrs. Lennox from head to foot in sheer wonderment. "She need hardly pride herself on that. She hasn't much of it, has she?"
 
"Yes,—in her own estimation," says the duchess, somewhat , whose crowning horror is a matron, to which title little Mrs. Lennox may safely lay claim.
 
"Well, I confess that puzzles me," says Mona, knitting her straight brows and scanning the small lady before her with earnest eyes, who is surrounded by at least a dozen men, with all of whom she is without any apparent effort. "I really think she is the smallest woman I ever saw. Why, I am only medium height, but surely I could make two of her. At least I have more figure, or form, as you call it, than she has."
 
The duchess gives it up. "Yes, and a far better one, too," she says, , declining to explain. Indeed, she is delighted to meet a young woman who actually regards slang as a foreign and unstudied language, and shrinks from being the first to help her to forget the English tongue. "Is there much beauty in Ireland?" she asks, presently.
 
"Yes, but we are all so different from the English. We have no pretty fair hair in Ireland, or at least very little of it."
 
"Do you admire our hair? And we are all so tired of it," says the duchess. "Well, tell me more about your own land. Are the women all like you? In style, I mean. I have seen a few, of course, but not enough to describe a whole."
 
"Like me? Oh, no," says Mrs. Geoffrey. "Some of them are really beautiful, like pictures. When I was staying with Aunt Anastasia—the Provost's wife, you remember—I saw a great many pretty people. I saw a great many students, too," says Mona, brightening, "and liked them very much. They liked me, too."
 
"How strange!" says the duchess, with an amused smile. "Are you quite sure of that?"
 
"Oh, quite. They used to take me all over the college, and sometimes to the bands in the squares. They were very good to me."
 
"They would be, of course," says the duchess.
 
"But they were troublesome, very troublesome," says Mrs. Geoffrey, with a retrospective sigh, leaning back in her chair and folding her hands together on her lap. "You can't imagine what a worry they were at times,—always ringing the college bell at the wrong hours, and getting tight!"
 
"Getting what?" asks the duchess, somewhat taken aback.
 
"Tight,—screwed,—tipsy, you know," replies Mona, innocently. "Tight was the word they taught me. I think they believed it sounded more respectable than the others. And the Divinity boys were the worst. Shall I tell you about them?"
 
"Do," says the duchess.
 
"Well, three of them used to come to see Aunt Anastasia; at least they said it was auntie, but they never to her if they could help it, and were always so glad when she went to sleep after dinner."
 
"I think your Aunt Anastasia was very good to them," says the duchess.
 
"But after a bit they grew very . When I tell you they all three proposed to me every day for a week, you will understand me. Yet even that we could have borne, though it was very expensive, because they used to go about stealing my gloves and my ribbons, but when they took to punching each other's heads about me auntie said I had better go to Uncle Brian for a while: so I went; and there I met Geoffrey," with a brilliant smile.
 
"I think Geoffrey owes those Divinity boys more than he can ever pay," says the duchess, very . "You must come and see me soon, child. I am an old woman, and seldom stir from home, except when I am ordered out by Malcom, as I was to-night. Come next Thursday. There are some charming trifles at the old Court that may amuse you, though I may fail to do so."
 
"I sha'n't want any trifles to amuse me, if you will talk to me," says Mona.
 
"Well, come early. And now go and dance with Mr. Darling. He has been looking at me very angrily for the last three minutes. By the by," putting up her glasses, "is that little girl in the lemon-colored gown his sister?"
 
"Yes; that is Sir Nicholas's Doatie Darling," returns Mona, with a light laugh. And then Nolly leads her away, and, feeling more confident with him, she is once again dancing as gayly as the best.
 
"Your foot is plainly 'on your native heath,'" says Nolly, "though your name may not be 'McGregor.' What on earth were you saying to that old woman for the last four hours?"
 
"It was only twenty minutes," says Mona.
 
"Twenty minutes! By Jove, she must be more interesting than we thought," says Mr. Darling, "if you can put it at that time. I thought she was going to eat you, she looked so pleased with you. And no wonder, too:" with a loud and a sigh.
 
"She was very nice to me," says Mona, "and is, I think, a very pleasant old lady. She asked me to go and see her next Thursday."
 
"Bless my stars!" says Nolly; "you have been going it. That is the day on which she will receive no one but her chief pets. The duchess, when she comes down here, reverses the order of things. The rest have an 'at home' day. She has a 'not at home' day."
 
"Where are people when they are not at home?" asks Mona, simply.
 
"That's the eighth wonder of the world," says Mr. Darling, mysteriously. "It has never yet been discovered. Don't seek to too closely into it; you might meet with a rebuff."
 
"How sad Nicholas looks!" says Mona, suddenly.
 
In a , somewhat out of the crush, Sir Nicholas is . His eyes are on Dorothy, who is laughing with a gay and plunger in the distance. He is looking and ; a shadow seems to have fallen into his dark eyes.
 
"Now he is thinking of that again," says Nolly, regretfully, who is a really good sort all round. "Let us go to him."
 
"Yes; let me go to him," says Mona, quickly; "I shall know what to say better than you."
 
After a little time she succeeds in lifting the cloud that has fallen on her brother. He has gr............