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and a beautifully shaped mouth, unmarred by moustaches or beard, and a broad white brow with one lock of black hair waving across to break its severity. His brows were perfect half-circles, his lashes as long and thick as a girl's.
    One might wonder how I could make out these details at such a distance. I had, of course, later opportunity to learn his features well. But even at that first meeting I was aware of his slightest feature. I saw him as if through a glass that magnified face and figure. When, after a long interval, he turned his head, I felt as though I had been released from a physical grasp.
    At the same moment my aunt's fingers grasped my arm, so hard that I winced.
    'He saw you,' she hissed into my ear. 'He looked at you for a full half minute. Lud, who could have imagined such a thing, the very moment we arrived!'
    'He looked, but did not seem to like what he saw,' I retorted, still shaken. 'He did not smile.'
    'He seldom smiles; that is his nature. But you're a greater ninny than I take you for if you misunderstood his look.'
    'You know him? Who is he?'
    'I've not met him. But everyone knows him, he is one of the catches of the season. Edward, Baron Clare. He is not Irish, as you might suppose, but has vast estates in the north. His father died recently, and it is rumored that he is looking for a wife.'
    The word made me shrink, somehow; it was as if that long, unsmiling look had awakened me to thoughts I had never before wished to contemplate. I must be someone's wife; and this man would be some woman's husband ... Mine? The thought was not wholly repulsive. I could only dream of Fernando, I could not be his; since I must belong to some man, this one ... It could be worse. I knew that, from the candidates who had been paraded before me. He was handsome, titled, older, but not too old...
    'Rich?'
    I spoke the word aloud, and my aunt, pulling me across the floor, gave me a quick approving look.
    'I don't know,' she admitted, with uncharacteristic candor. 'His estates are large, as I said, but there are rumors ... You'd best hope he is not well off. The Clares are too highborn for the likes of us, but ten thousand—'
    I pulled my arm away from her grasp; as always, that phrase infuriated me.
    My aunt's frantic search for a mutual acquaintance who would present us to Baron Clare did not immediately bear fruit. When the dancing began I was claimed by a willowy young twig of the nobility whom I had met before ('Three elder brothers—you can do better'), and my aunt grudgingly let me go. The dance was a quadrille, which I could manage well enough; the quick country dances, naturally, were beyond my abilities, but for some reason my limp never bothered me a great deal when I danced.
    During the quadrille I caught glimpses of my aunt and noted, with sour amusement, that she was accosting one lady after another, still in search of an introduction. I also noticed the Baron. He was not dancing. The arrogant tilt of his head, as he surveyed the passing couples, suggested a sultan inspecting the latest consignment of slaves; and the curl of his handsome mouth implied that he thought poorly of the lot.
    After all, it was I who provided the desired introduction. A turn in the measure of the dance brought me face to face with someone I had never expected to see—a figure from out of the past. It was my old foe and later chum Margaret Montgomery, who had left Miss Plum's the year before I did. The exuberant nature which had prompted her to fling her cake at me had been subdued by time and Miss Plum, but it had not been obliterated; at the sight of me she stopped, with a cry of delight and her arms outflung. I foresaw a deplorable disruption of the dance, but Margaret's partner, a chubby young man with a beaming face, seemed to know her well. He caught her wrist and twirled her back into step, with an apologetic smile at me. Laughing, she went with him; but as soon as the dance was over she rushed up to me.
    'Who would have