Lights are blazing, are sounding; all the world is abroad to-night. Even still, though the ball at the Towers has been opened long since by Mona and the Duke of Lauderdale, the light of carriage-lamps is making the roads bright, by casting tiny rays upon the frosted ground.  
The fourth dance has come to an end; cards are full; every one is settling down to work in earnest; already the first touch of satisfaction or of carefully-suppressed disappointment is making itself felt.
 
Mona, who has again been dancing with the duke, stopping near where the duchess is sitting, the latter her to her side by a slight wave of her fan. To the duchess "a thing of beauty is a joy forever," and to gaze on Mona's lovely face and admire her but brilliant smile gives her a strange pleasure.
 
"Come and sit by me. You can spare me a few minutes," she says, drawing her ample skirts to one side. Mona, taking her hand from Lauderdale's arm, drops into the seat beside his mother, much to that young man's , who, having inherited the material hankering after that " prejudice," as Theocritus terms beauty, is decidedly epris with Mrs. Geoffrey, and takes it badly being done out of his tete-a-tete with her.
 
"Mrs. Rodney would perhaps prefer to dance, mother," he says, with some .
 
"Mrs. Rodney will not mind wasting a quarter of an hour on an old woman," says the duchess, equably.
 
"I am not so sure of that," says Mona, with admirable and an smile, "but I shouldn't mind spending an hour with you."
 
Lauderdale makes a little face, and tells himself secretly "all women are liars," but the duchess is very pleased, and bends her friendliest glance upon the pretty creature at her side, who possesses that greatest of all charms, inability to notice the of time.
 
Perhaps another reason for Mona's having found such favor in the eyes of "the biggest woman in our shire, sir," lies in the fact that she is in many ways so totally unlike all the other young women with whom the duchess is in the habit of associating. She is to an extraordinary degree, and says and does things that might appear outre in others, but are so much a part of Mona that it neither startles nor offends one when she gives way to them.
 
Just now, for example, a pause occurring in the conversation, Mona, fastening her eyes upon her Grace's neck, says, with genuine admiration,—
 
"What a lovely necklace you are wearing!"
 
To make personal remarks, we all know, is vulgar, is indeed a of the commonest show of good breeding; yet somehow Mrs. Geoffrey's tone does not touch on vulgarity, does not even belong to the skirts of ill-breeding. She has an gentleness of her own, that carries her safely over all social difficulties.
 
The duchess is amused.
 
"It is pretty, I think," she says. "The duke," with a grave look, "gave it to me just two years after my son was born."
 
"Did he?" says Mona. "Geoffrey gave me these pearls," pointing to a pretty string round her own white neck, "a month after we were married. It seems quite a long time ago now," with a sigh and a little smile. "But your opals are perfect. Just like the moonlight. By the by," as if it has suddenly occurred to her, "did you ever see the lake by moonlight? I mean from the mullioned window in the north gallery?"
 
"The lake here? No," says the duchess.
 
"Haven't you?" in surprise. "Why it is the most thing in the world. Oh, you must see it: you will be delighted with it. Come with me, and I will show it to you," says Mona, eagerly, rising from her seat in her fashion.
 
She is plainly very much in earnest, and has her large eyes—lovely as loving—with calm upon the duchess. She has altogether forgotten that she is a duchess (perhaps, indeed, has never quite grasped the fact), and that she is an and portly person not accustomed to exercise of any description.
 
For a moment her Grace hesitates, then is lost. It is to her a new sensation to be taken about by a young woman to see things. Up to this, it has been she who has taken the young women about to see things. But Mona is so openly and genuinely anxious to a favor upon her to do her, in fact, a good turn, that she is , sweetened, , almost flattered, by this artless desire to please her for "love's sake" alone.
 
She too rises, lays her hand on Mona's arm, and walks through the long room, and past the county generally, to "see the lake by moonlight." Yet it is not for the sake of gazing upon almost unrivalled scenery she goes, but to please this Irish girl, whom so very few can resist.
 
"Where has Mona taken the duchess?" asks Lady Rodney of Sir Nicholas half an hour later.
 
"She took her to see the lake. Mona, you know, about it, when the moon lights it up.
 
"She is very absurd, and more troublesome and unpleasant than anybody I ever had in my house. Of course the duchess did not want to see the water. She was talking to old Lord Dering about the drainage question, and seemed quite happy, when that girl . Common courtesy compelled her, I suppose, to say yes to—Mona's—proposition."
 
"I hardly think the duchess is the sort of woman to say yes when she meant no," says Nicholas, with a half smile. "She went because it so pleased her, and for no other reason. I begin to think, indeed, that Lilian Chetwoode is rather out of it, and that Mona is the first favorite at present. She has evidently taken the duchess by storm."
 
"Why not say the duke too?" says his mother, with a cold glance, to whom praise of Mona is anything but "cakes and ale." "Her with him is very apparent. It is disgraceful. Every one is noticing and talking about it. Geoffrey alone seems to see nothing! Like all under-bred people, she cannot know satisfaction unless perched upon the topmost rung of the ladder."
 
"You are slightly nonsensical when on the subject of Mona," says Sir Nicholas, with a . " and she could not exist in the same atmosphere. She is to Lauderdale what she is to everyone else,—gay, bright, and wanting in self-conceit. I cannot understand how it is that you alone refuse to acknowledge her charms. To me she is like a little soft sunbeam floating here and there and falling into the hearts of those around her, carrying light, and joy, and laughter, and merry music with her as she goes."
 
"You speak like a lover," says Lady Rodney, with an artificial laugh. "Do you repeat all this to Dorothy? She must find it very interesting."
 
"Dorothy and I are quite agreed about Mona," replies he, calmly. "She likes her as much as I do. As to what you say about her encouraging Lauderdale's attentions, it is absurd. No such evil thought could enter her head."
 
At this instant a soft ringing laugh, that once heard is not easily forgotten, comes from an inner room, that is carefully curtained and delicately lighted, and upon their ears.
 
It is Mona's laugh. Raising their eyes, both mother and son turn their heads hastily (and quite involuntarily) and gaze upon the scene beyond. They are so that they can see into the curtained and mark the picture it contains. The duke is bending over Mona in a manner that might perhaps be termed by an outsider slightly empresse, and Mona is looking up at him, and both are laughing gayly,—Mona with all the freshness of unchecked youth, the duke with such a thorough and sense of as he has not known for years.
 
Then Mona rises, and they both come to the entrance of the small room, and stand where Lady Rodney can overhear what they are saying.
 
"Oh! so you can ride, then," says Lauderdale, probably to the cause of his late merriment.
 
"Sure of course," says Mona. "Why, I used to ride the colts barebacked at home."
 
Lady Rodney .
 
"Sometimes I long again for a mad, wild straight across country, where nobody can see me,—such as I used to have," goes on Mona, half regretfully.
 
"And who allowed you to risk your life like that?" asks the duke, with simple . His sister before she married was not permitted to cross the threshold without a at her side. This girl is a revelation.
 
"No one," says Mona. "I had no need to ask permission for anything. I was free to do what I wished."
 
She looks up at him again with some fire in her eyes and a flush upon her cheeks. Perhaps some of the natural lawlessness of her kindred is making her blood warm. So , however, she is the very embodiment of youth and love and sweetness, and so the duke admits.
 
"Have you any sisters?" he asks, .
 
"No. Nor brothers. Only myself.
 
"'I am all the daughters of my father's house,
And all the brothers too!'"
She nods her head gayly as she says this, being pleased at her apt from the one book she has studied very closely.
 
The duke loses his head a little.
 
"Do you know," he says, slowly, staring at her the while, "you are the most beautiful woman I ever saw?"
 
"Ah! so Geoffrey says," returns she, with a unembarrassed and pleased little laugh, while a great gleam of tender love comes into her eyes as she makes mention of her husband's name. "But I really am not you know."
 
This answer, being so full of thorough unconsciousness and childish naivete, has the effect of reducing the duke to common sense once more, and of making him very properly ashamed of himself. He feels, however, rather out of it for a minute or two, which feeling renders him silent and somewhat . So Mona, flung upon her own resources, looks round the room seeking for inspiration, and presently finds it.
 
"What a disagreeable-looking man that is over there!" she says: "the man with the shaggy beard, I mean, and the long hair."
 
She doesn't want in the very least to know who he is, but thinks it her duty to say something, as the silence being grows embarrassing.
 
"The man with the mane? that is Griffith Blount. The most objectionable person any one could meet, but tolerated because his tongue is so awful. Do you know Colonel Graves? No! Well, he has a wife calculated to terrify the bravest man into , and last year when he was going abroad Blount met him, and asked him before a roomful 'if he was going for pleasure, or if he was going to take his wife with him.' Neat, wasn't it? But I don't remember hearing that Graves liked it."
 
"It was very unkind," says Mona; "and he has a hateful face."
 
"He has," says the duke. "But he has his reward, you know: nobody likes him. By the by, what bad times they are having in your land!—ricks of hay burning nightly, cattle killed, everybody , and small children speared!"
 
"Oh, no, not that," says Mona. "Poor Ireland! Every one either laughs at her or hates her. Though I like my adopted country, still I shall always feel for old Erin what I could never feel for another land."
 
"And quite right too," says Lauderdale. "You remember what Scott says:
 
"'Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!'"
"Oh, yes, lots of 'em," says Mr. Darling, who has come suddenly up beside them: "for instance, I don't believe I ever said it in all my life, either to myself or to any one else. Are you engaged, Mrs. Geoffrey? And if not, may I have this dance?............