The ball to which allusion has already been made, as the one gaiety of its kind that proved attainable for Philippa Raynsworth during her visit to Cannes, though a private one, was given at a hotel. And that hotel was the temporary residence of Mrs and Miss Worthing.

It came about, therefore, naturally enough that they were among the guests, though they had not previously been acquainted with the givers of the dance. For kind Lady Mary Bertram thought it would be “too bad” for a young creature like Aline Worthing to be actually on the spot, listening to the inspiring strains, which would probably prevent her going to sleep, without taking part in the entertainment. So she arranged that there should be an introduction, followed by a card of invitation.

Philippa had heard of the circumstance, but without paying special attention to it. The evening was not destined, however, to pass without her having reason to wish more fervently even than heretofore that the mother and daughter had selected some other route for their journey home from Italy, than that which had brought them to their present halting-place.

She had looked forward to the ball with considerable interest and a fair amount of girlish excitement, which Miss Lermont was glad to see. It was only natural and right that Philippa should enjoy herself and should wish to do so. And this dance was almost a dÉbut for her. In the Raynsworths’ very quiet life, occasions of the kind were rare, and since Philippa had been really grown-up, for various local reasons the neighbourhood of Greenleaves had been peculiarly dull.

Maida herself superintended her cousin’s toilet, and the result fully rewarded her. Philippa had never looked better, and her total absence of self-consciousness greatly added to the charm of her appearance. She was frankly pleased with her dress, and delighted that her kind friends approved of the whole effect, and then she thought no more about it.

“Of course I do not expect to dance very much,” she said to Maida, “and I hope Lady Mary will not trouble herself about partners for me. It is not as if we had been here all the winter and knew everybody there is to know; it is not even as if we lived in the ‘world’ at home, like the Worthings. Miss Worthing says they have found ever so many old friends and acquaintances here. But I shall enjoy it quite as much if I dance very little; it will be all so new to me, you see.”

She did not allow, even to her inmost self, that the knowledge of Mr Gresham’s presence, the certainty that he would not suffer the evening to pass without spending as much of it as good taste would permit by her side, had something to do with this foreseeing philosophy of hers. And Miss Lermont was the very last person to hint at such a thing.

“I daresay you will have quite as much dancing as you care about, dear,” she said, quietly, “I am sure you dance well; you have the look of it, and your partners will find that out quickly. Besides,” with a smile, “you must allow something for the charm of novelty. Those other girls who have been here all the winter have not that advantage over you.”

Philippa laughed.

“There will be the charm of novelty for me, assuredly,” she said.

And then, as the Bertrams’ carriage was announced, she kissed her cousin affectionately, promising to relate all her adventures in full the next morning.

“I am sure she will enjoy herself,” said Maida to Mr Raynsworth, as he came back from putting his daughter into the carriage.

“I have no doubt of it,” he said. “In fact she has enjoyed everything here. And it is all greatly due to you, Maida. I have never seen Philippa so bright and light-hearted in her life. And I am most thankful for it. She deserves to be happy.”

“Yes,” Miss Lermont agreed, warmly. “She does indeed.”

And Philippa did “enjoy herself.” To her the whole scene was almost one of enchantment, and she threw herself into it with no misgiving. Personally, though in her inexperience she did not realise this, she was a great success, and she had certainly no reason to test the truth of her prediction that she would be equally happy if she danced little or much.

Mr Gresham was her most frequent partner; but from their previous acquaintance this seemed only natural. And he in no way obtruded the fact. He had no desire to make any gossip about himself or his affairs prematurely, and till he had entirely and completely decided that in Miss Raynsworth he had at last found his ideal, he would have considered any behaviour calling for such comment decidedly ill-judged and in bad taste.

Nevertheless he managed to appropriate to himself a good deal of the girl’s time and attention. And the result of the ball at the HÔtel —, at which Philippa’s bearing and the admiration she excited fulfilled his best anticipations, was such as to make him all but own to himself that in Miss Raynsworth he had found something very nearly approaching perfection.

The evening did not, however, pass, as has been said, without a sting of annoyance to poor Philippa. Among the maids deputed to attend to the ladies in the cloak-room was Mrs Worthing’s “Bailey.”

On arrival, the room being crowded and the attendants busy, Philippa did not notice the maid’s presence. But later in the evening a slight accident happened to her dress, a frill of which was torn. Aline Worthing was standing near her at the time, and good-naturedly offered to go with her to have it mended, and without the least misgiving, Miss Raynsworth thanked her, and went with her to the cloak-room, now comparatively deserted.

“Bailey must be here; our maid, I mean,” said Aline, glancing round. She was a little near-sighted. And at the name, Philippa’s heart for a moment seemed to stand still.

“Oh, pray don’t trouble to find your maid,” she said, eagerly. “Any one can do what is required; a few pins indeed are all that is necessary.”

But Miss Worthing, in the sort of enthusiasm she had conceived for her new friend, was not satisfied with half measures.

“Bailey! Bailey!” she called, as she caught sight of her attendant at the other end of the room; “come quick. I want you to mend Miss Raynsworth’s skirt!”

The woman hastened towards the two girls; but as she drew near them a curious change came over her face, which had hitherto expressed only good-natured readiness to attend to her young lady’s summons. It grew hard and almost repellent in expression, with a look in the eyes of something so nearly approaching insolence that it made Philippa shudder. Yet Bailey was not a bad or vindictive woman. She was simply one of her class; perhaps specially prone, as Mrs Shepton had warned Philippa, to jealousy of any one younger or better-looking than herself, and, as a not unnatural result of this, to suspicion.

She smiled slightly as she addressed Aline, but the smile was not a pleasant one, and she seemed to avoid looking at Philippa, as if she wished to obtrude her ignoring of her.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said; “what is it I can do? Have you torn your dress?” and she glanced at Aline’s draperies with a kind of affectation of concern.

“No, no,” said the girl, impatiently, “didn’t you hear what I said? It is Miss Raynsworth’s dress that is torn, not mine. Get a needle and thread and mend it as quickly as you can.”

“Miss—Miss Ray’s dress?” said Bailey, slowly; “no, Miss Aline, I did not understand that Miss Ray was a friend of yours.”

And now, almost as if indifferent whether Miss Worthing noticed her extraordinary manner or not, she stared hard at Philippa, with the same half-impertinent, half-contemptuous smile on her face.

Philippa grew white; Aline grew red with shame.

“Bailey,” she said, indignantly, “what is the matter with you? Are you going out of your mind? Or have you been asleep and don’t know what you are saying?”

The maid in her turn reddened a little. She was evidently not accustomed to be spoken to so sharply, and it mortified her.

“I did not understand,” she muttered, confusedly, and she drew a thimble and needle-case out of her pocket. “If you will show me—” she began.

But Philippa by this time had quite recovered her self-possession. Every nerve in her body tingled with proud indignation. Whether wisely or unwisely, she felt that there was but one course possible for her to pursue.

“She shall not dare to think that I am afraid of her,” she said to herself.

And she fixed her eyes undauntedly on Bailey with a gesture of repelling her now offered services.

“No,” she said, icily. “I am much obliged to you, Miss Worthing, but I should much prefer one of the other maids mending my skirt,” and she turned away and walked slowly across the room to where one of the French chamber-maids was standing, looking rather astonished at the little scene, though she had no idea what it was all about. And just for a moment Bailey felt staggered. Could she have made a mistake as to the identity of this young lady and Phillis Ray, the maid, whom she had met and disliked at Wyverston? The very idea frightened her; what would her mistress say to her if “Miss Aline” told of her rudeness? Bailey’s imagination was well stocked with sensational fiction; she had read of extraordinary likenesses, leading to still more extraordinary mistakes. But no, a moment’s reflection satisfied her again. There were other coincidences—here, at Cannes, this girl was figuring as Miss Raynsworth, sister to Mrs Marmaduke Headfort (for Bailey knew all the small talk and gossip of the place already); there, at Wyverston, she had been the same lady’s maid. There was some mystery, some secret, and Bailey’s sensational novels came in handy again, as suggesting reasons and clues by the score. She had not made a mistake.

All this passed through her mind so rapidly that she was quite prepared with an answer when Aline, waiting an instant till Philippa was out of earshot, turned upon her again hotly.

“Bailey,” she said, “I am utterly ashamed of you. I do not know what has come over you, but I warn you I shall tell mamma all about it.”

Somewhat to her surprise, Bailey did not seem impressed by what she said. Aline was in general very mild and gentle, and Bailey was an old servant. Miss Worthing would not have dared to speak so strongly to her, had she not herself for once been really angry, and she was half prepared for something rude in reply. But the maid answered calmly enough:

“Of course, miss, you must tell your mamma what you like. But I shall have something to tell her too—something that will surprise her more than anything you tell her of my behaviour. And I take blame to myself that I have not spoken out before; so particular as your mamma has always been about you.”

“What do you mean, Bailey? Say what you mean, or I will go straight into the ball-room and bring mamma here,” said Aline, beginning to be vaguely frightened as well as angry.

“As you like, Miss Aline,” returned the maid, curtly; “but—”

Aline, glancing round, saw at this moment Philippa, her skirt repaired, coming slowly towards her. Something in Miss Raynsworth’s cool and stately bearing at once reassured the younger girl, and afraid of the possibility of repeated insolence on Bailey’s part, she hurried forward to meet her companion.

“Thank you so much for waiting for me,” said Philippa. “I hope you will not have missed all this dance.”

“Oh, no; I don’t mind,” said Aline, confusedly. “Miss Raynsworth,” she went on, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to apologise to you for Bailey’s insolence. I don’t know what has come over her, unless she is going out of her mind. She was never like that before. I shall tell mamma about it at once.”

“Oh, pray don’t,” said Philippa. “Do not spoil the evening by anything disagreeable. Wait till you are in your own rooms afterwards. It is really making too much of it to say anything to Mrs Worthing at all, but still I can understand your feeling about it.”

It would be worse than useless she well knew to persuade the girl not to tell her mother, even could she herself have condescended to do so. For she now felt little doubt that Bailey would communicate her suspicions, whatever form they had taken, to her mistress; and any check from herself as to Aline’s account of the strange occurrence would only lower her position.

“I can’t understand her” repeated Aline. “She really looked at you as if she hated you, Miss Raynsworth. Can she be confusing you with some one else? Now I come to think of it, she spoke of you as ‘Miss Ray,’ did she not?”

“Yes,” said Philippa, “I think she did. I daresay she did take me for—for another person.”

“There are very strange likenesses sometimes between people who have nothing to do with each other,” said Aline, looking perplexed.

But by this time they were entering the ball-room, and Mr Gresham, who had been waiting about the door for Philippa’s return, came forward to claim a dance, and at the same time Captain Bertram asked Aline to make up a Lancers set with him. So the two girls were separated. Nor did they meet again, except for a hurried good-bye at the end.

Poor Philippa, she would gladly have been left by herself for a few moments, to recover her composure and think over the disagreeable shock she had just received. For the brave front she had put upon it was only in appearance; in reality she was miserably upset.

“You are looking very pale, Miss Raynsworth,” said Mr Gresham. “Are you tired? Pray don’t dance if you would rather sit quietly and rest.”

“No, thank you,” Philippa replied. “I would rather dance,” which, under the circumstances—“sitting out” only meaning a tÊte-À-tÊte with her partner—was certainly true. “I am really not tired,” she went on, “though I have been dancing so energetically as to tear my dress, you saw?”

“That was that clumsy Delmaine’s fault,” he replied. “I saw how it happened. I was waiting to catch you as you came back from the cloak-room. It is all right now, I suppose?” with a glance at her skirts. It would have annoyed him to find himself entangled in his partner’s torn flounces before the whole ball-room!

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “I got it mended by one of the maids in the cloak-room.”

The word—or was it an unconscious intuition of what was passing in the girl’s mind?—caught Mr Gresham’s ear.

“Oh, by-the-by,” he said, “I wanted to ask you something. Do give me leave to speak to Mrs Worthing about that insolent maid of hers. I really think she must be insane. I cannot forget about it, and I do not think such a thing should be allowed to pass.”

Philippa smiled—had Mr Gresham been more discriminating, her smile would have struck him as a very bitter one.

“Oh, dear,” she said, “I wonder at your remembering about that absurd thing. Surely it should be treated as beneath contempt.”

Mr Gresham looked dissatisfied.

“You might understand,” he said, speaking in a lower tone of voice, and with something of reproach, “You might understand how inexpressibly annoying it was to me for anything of the kind to happen to you; above all, when you were in the position of my guest.”

He glanced at her with a kind of delicate inquiry in her eyes, and the accent on the pronoun made Philippa’s cheeks flush.

“Don’t mind about it, I beg of you,” she said, earnestly. “Promise me you will not mention it to Mrs Worthing. I scarcely know her at all, and—and—she might not be nice about it. You have been so kind,” she went on; “you have done so much to add to the pleasure of my time here, that I should hate to think it could be associated with anything disagreeable. Please promise me,” she repeated, in conclusion.

He smiled.

“I am afraid I should find it difficult not to promise you anything you liked to ask,” he said. “Well, then, we will let the matter drop. I am so glad, so delighted that you have enjoyed your visit here; and if I have in the very least added to your amusement, as you so kindly say, I need scarcely assure you that I am repaid a thousandfold.”

Then he went on to speak, in his most attractive way, of meeting again in England; of Evelyn and her husband; of “Charley,” whom he had heard of and would be so pleased to meet; exerting himself so tactfully to talk of the things which he knew interested her the most, that Philippa forgot the painful shock she had experienced, or only recalled it to make light of her own exaggerated fears.

“After all,” she said to herself, “at the very worst I did nothing wrong, nothing really to feel ashamed of. And if—if I were ever to get to know Mr Gresham better—really very well indeed, I could make him understand it all. Even that rough, surly Michael was kind about it, and Bernard is infinitely gentler and less harsh judging than he. No; I need not be unhappy.” And that night when she passed Maida’s room, of which the door was slightly ajar, and heard Miss Lermont’s voice saying, softly:

“Philippa, dear, is that you? Have you enjoyed yourself?” she answered brightly, as she went in for a moment:

“Enjoyed myself? I should think so. I have never been so happy in my life.”

The words and tone gave Miss Lermont much subject for thought. Was this to be the girl’s fate, then? Was she destined to be one of the favoured few to whom the good things of life come almost before life has really begun? Was it to be a case of “true love running smooth,” one of the exceptions to prove the rule? It looked like it. And in the eyes of the world—and that not of the thoroughly “worldly” world either—such a marriage for Philippa Raynsworth would be not only brilliant, but excellent in every possible way.

“Yet,” thought Maida to herself, “yet, is he really good enough for her?”

Forty-eight hours after the ball saw Mr Raynsworth and his daughter started on their journey home.