wraps were hung, when a young man with a sprightly foot and a shock
of black hair shot into the middle of the floor and clapped his
hands. The signal took instant effect. The musicians hurried to
their instruments, the dancers-some already half-muffled for
departure-fell into line down each side of the room, the older
spectators slipped back to their chairs, and the lively young man,
after diving about here and there in the throng, drew forth a girl
who had already wound a cherry-coloured "fascinator" about her head,
and, leading her up to the end of the floor, whirled her down its
length to the bounding tune of a Virginia reel.

Frome's heart was beating fast. He had been straining for a glimpse
of the dark head under the cherry-coloured scarf and it vexed him
that another eye should have been quicker than his. The leader of
the reel, who looked as if he had Irish blood in his veins, danced
well, and his partner caught his fire. As she passed down the line,
her light figure swinging from hand to hand in circles of increasing
swiftness, the scarf flew off her head and stood out behind her
shoulders, and Frome, at each turn, caught sight of her laughing
panting lips, the cloud of dark hair about her forehead, and the
dark eyes which seemed the only fixed points in a maze of flying
lines.

The dancers were going faster and faster, and the musicians, to keep
up with them, belaboured their instruments like jockeys lashing
their mounts on the home-stretch; yet it seemed to the young man at
the window that the reel would never end. Now and then he turned his
eyes from the girl's face to that of her partner, which, in the
exhilaration of the dance, had taken on a look of almost impudent
ownership. Denis Eady was the son of Michael Eady, the ambitious