your name down so many times. Only once, please. I have promised to keep some for Mr. Frank Hallett."
Trant's eyes flamed. He left her sulkily. When the time came for his dance, he did not appear to claim it, and Elsie danced it with Blake. Nor did he come to make apologies. Elsie would have been offended if she had not noticed that his eyes glowered upon her whenever she turned hers towards him, and his anger, she felt, was a tribute to her power.
Just then, however, when Frank returned, he was made almost happy by the radiant smile with which Elsie showed him the blanks.
Oh yes, it was a triumphant evening for vain Elsie. She was the belle of the room. Rose Garfit was nowhere, and Mrs. Allanby quite out in the cold.
The sense of conquest was intoxicating. All the men present whom she considered worth captivating she had reduced to abject subjection. Never in her life had she so thoroughly enjoyed herself. Perhaps the enjoyment was all the more intense because there mingled with her triumph and elation a strange sense of dread, a certain vague pain and expectancy which gave a keener edge to life, and might have been the thrill of a new sense. And it was true. There were awakening in her sensations she had never known. It was as if she had taken a plunge into new deep waters, when all her life she had been floating on as hallow sunlit stream.
CHAPTER XIII.
"HEARTS NOT IN IT."
The greater number of the guests left on the morrow. The Horace Gages, and Elsie, as well as the Baròlin gentlemen, the Garfits, and one or two of the Leichardt's Town people had been asked to stay a day longer, to join a riding
