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With a long breath, he answered “Yes.”

“I shall be very fit to see Jane--which is all I want.”

“Do you not feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such an opportunity of dancing a reel?”

He spoke, and rising hurl’d his forceful dart, Which, driven by Pallas, pierced a vital part; Full in his face it enter’d, and betwixt The nose and eye-ball the proud Lycian fix’d; Crash’d all his jaws, and cleft the tongue within, Till the bright point look’d out beneath the chin. Headlong he falls, his helmet knocks the ground: Earth groans beneath him, and his arms resound; The starting coursers tremble with affright; The soul indignant seeks the realms of night.

“O friend! two chiefs of force immense I see, Dreadful they come, and bend their rage on thee: Lo the brave heir of old Lycaon’s line, And great Æneas, sprung from race divine! Enough is given to fame. Ascend thy car! And save a life, the bulwark of our war.”

“I am perfectly ready, I assure you, to keep my engagement; and, when your sister is recovered, you shall, if you please, name the very day of the ball. But you would not wish to be dancing while she is ill?”

“And where did you come across her?”

“No, no; stay where you are. You are charmingly grouped, and appear to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth. Good-bye.”

Nothing but concern for Elizabeth could enable Bingley to keep his countenance. His sister was less delicate, and directed her eye towards Mr. Darcy with a very expressive smile. Elizabeth, for the sake of saying something that might turn her mother’s thoughts, now asked her if Charlotte Lucas had been at Longbourn since her coming away.

“Miss Eliza Bennet,” said Miss Bingley, “despises cards. She is a great reader, and has no pleasure in anything else.”

He hesitated for a moment. “Very well,” he said at last, “but don’t be too long dressing.” She danced out of the door. One could hear her singing as she ran upstairs. Her little feet pattered overhead.

“Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example, and take a turn about the room. I assure you it is very refreshing after sitting so long in one attitude.”

“Foolish child! foolish child!” was the parrot-phrase flung in answer. The waving of crooked, false-jewelled fingers gave grotesqueness to the words.

“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”

“I should like balls infinitely better,” she replied, “if they were carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing made the order of the day.”

He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit’s bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.

“Quick, Bildad,” said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close vicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin gangway. “Quick, I say, you Bildad, and get the ship’s papers. We must have Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog, we’ll give ye the ninetieth lay, and that’s more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket.”

[Copyright 1894 by George Allen.]]