first waltz, in her first grown-up dance, D. was well provided, nervous
as the moment was.

There is a passage in _Eleanor_ which commemorates first this playful
sympathy and tact which made Lord Dufferin so delightful to all ages,
and next, an amusing conversation with him that I remember a year or two
later in Paris. As to the first--Lucy Foster, the young American girl,
is lunching at the Embassy.

"Ah! my dear lady!" said the Ambassador, "how few things in this
world one does to please one's self! This is one of them."

Lucy flushed with a young and natural pleasure. She was on the
Ambassador's left, and he had just laid his wrinkled hand for an
instant on hers--with a charming and paternal freedom.

"Have you enjoyed yourself?--have you lost your heart to Italy?"
said her host stooping to her....

"I have been in fairyland," said she, shyly, opening her blue eyes
upon him. "Nothing can ever be like it again."

"No--because one can never be twenty again," said the old man,
sighing. "Twenty years hence, you will wonder where the magic came
from. Never mind--just now, anyway, the world's your oyster."

Then he looked at her a little more closely.... He missed some of
that quiver of youth and enjoyment he had felt in her before; and
there were some very dark lines under the beautiful eyes. What was
wrong? Had she met the man--the appointed one?