great nuisance; but keep the next for me, will you not?"

She nodded and smiled, and he hurried off.

Mr. Percy still stood undecided. His cousin touched him on the shoulder,
"Are not you going to dance?" he asked.

"I suppose so," with the slightest possible shrug. "Miss Costello, if
you are disengaged, will you dance this quadrille with me?"

Lucia turned when he spoke. The same deep crimson flush came to her face
as when their eyes had first met that morning. She felt angry with him
for asking her, and with Maurice for having left her free. She longed to
say to him some of the civil impertinences women can use to men they
dislike, but she was too great a novice, and found no better expedient
than to accept the invitation as coolly as it was given. Probably,
however, Mr. Percy attributed her blush to a cause very different from
its real one; or else there was something soothing and agreeable in
finding himself in possession of incomparably the prettiest partner in
the room, for he began almost immediately to feel less bored, and
positively roused himself to the extent of making some exertion to
please his reluctant companion.

Now, it was all very well for Lucia to be cross, and to nurse her
crossness to the last possible minute, but a girl of sixteen, however
pretty and however spoiled, is not generally gifted with sufficient
strength of mind or badness of temper, to remain quite insensible to the
good qualities of a handsome man, who evidently wishes to make himself
agreeable to her. When the man in question is the lion of the day,
probably his success becomes inevitable; at all events, Lucia gradually