"I FEAR I SHALL FAIL" The band had been discoursing lively strains for some time, and Miss Wildmere had at last dragged her mother down for a chaperon--the only available one as yet.

The anxious mother was eager to return to her fretting child, and her daughter was much inclined to resent Graydon's prolonged absence.

"If it were politic, and I had other acquaintances, I would punish him," she thought.

It was a new experience for her to sit in a corner of the parlor, apparently neglected, while others were dancing.

There were plenty who looked wistfully toward her; but there was no one to introduce her, and Graydon's absence left the ice unbroken.
She ignored the inevitable isolation of a new-comer, however, and when he appeared shook her finger at him as she said, "Here I am, constancy itself, waiting to give you my first dance, as I promised." "I shall try to prove worthy," he said, earnestly.