But positive rudeness where a woman was concerned did not come easy to him. He stopped, and muttered something indistinctly enough about “the pleasure of a dance.” The girl had grown pale again by this time, and in her eyes a half startled, almost pained expression was replacing the glad expectancy. As he spoke, however, something of the former look returned to them.
“I – I shall be very pleased,” she said. “I am not engaged for anything.”
“I should think not,” he said to himself. “I am quite sure you dance atrociously.”
But aloud he said with the slow, impassive tone in which some of his admirers considered him so to excel that “Despard’s drawl” had its school of followers —
“Shall we say the – the tenth waltz? I fear it is the first I can propose.”
“Thank you,” Miss Fforde replied. She looked as if she would have been ready to say more had he in the least encouraged it, but he, feeling that he had done his duty, turned away – the more eagerly as at that moment he caught sight in the crowd of a lady he knew.
“Mrs Marrinder! What a godsend!” he exclaimed.
He did not see Miss Fforde’s face as he left her, and, had he done so, it would have taken far more than his very average modicum of discernment to have rightly interpreted the varying and curiously intermingling expressions which rapidly crossed it, like cloud shadows alternating with dashes of sunshine on an April morning. She stood for a moment or two where she was, then glancing round and seeing a vacant seat in a corner she quietly appropriated it.
“The tenth waltz,” she repeated to herself with the ghost of a smile. “I wonder – ” but that was all.
The evening wore on. Miss Fforde had danced once – but only once. It was with a man whom her host himself introduced to her, and, though good-natured and unaffected, he was boyish and commonplace; and she had to put some force on herself to reply with any show of interest to his attempts at conversation. She was engaged for one or two other dances, but it was hot, and the rooms were crowded, and with a scarcely acknowledged reflection – for Miss Fforde was young and inexperienced enough to think it hardly fair to make an engagement even for but a dance, to break it deliberately – that if her partners did not find her it would not much matter, the girl withdrew quietly into a corner, where a friendly curtain all but screened her from observation, and allowed her to enjoy in peace the dangerous but delightful refreshment of an open window hard by.
The draught betrayed its source, however. She was scarcely seated when voices approaching caught her ears.
“Here you are – there must be a window open, it is ever so much cooler in this corner. Are you afraid of the draught?” said a voice she thought she recognised.
“No-o – at least – oh, this corner will do beautifully. The curtain will protect me. What a blessing to get a little air!” replied a second speaker – a lady evidently.
“People have no business to cram their rooms so. And these rooms are – well, not spacious. How in the world did you get Marrinder to come?”
The second speaker laughed. “It was quite the other way,” she replied. “How did he get me to come? you might ask. He has something or other to do with our host, and made a personal matter of my coming, so, of course, I gave in.”
“How angelic!”
“It is a penance; but we’re going immediately.”
“I shall disappear with you.”
“You! Why you told me a moment ago that you were obliged to dance with some protégée of Mrs Englewood’s – that she had made a point of it. And you haven’t danced with her yet, to my certain knowledge,” said the woman’s voice again.
A sort of groan was the reply.
“Why, what’s the matter?” with a light laugh.
“I had forgotten; you might have let me forget and go off with a clear conscience.”
“What is there so dreadful about it?”
“It is that girl in black I have to dance with for my sins. Such a little dowdy. I am convinced she can’t waltz. It was truly putting old friendship to the test to expect it of me. And of all things I do detest a bread-and-butter miss. You can see at a glance that this one has never left a country village before. She – ”
But his further confidences were interrupted by the arrival of Mr Marrinder in search of his wife.
“You don’t care to stay any longer, I suppose?” said the new-comer.
“Oh, – no; I am quite ready. I was engaged for this dance – the tenth, isn’t it? But I am tired, and it doesn’t matter. My partner, whoever he was, can find some one else. Good-night, Mr Norreys.”
“Let me go with you to the door at least,” he replied. “I’ll look about for that girl in black on my way, so that if I don’t see her I can honestly feel I have done my duty.”
Then there came a flutter and rustling, and Miss Fforde knew that her neighbours had taken their departure.
She waited an instant, and then came out of her corner.
“He is not likely to come back to look for me in this room,” she thought; “but in case he possibly should, I – I shall not hide myself.”
She had had a moment’s sharp conflict with herself before arriving at this decision; and her usually pale face was still faintly flushed when, slowly making his way in the direction of the sofa where she had now conspicuously placed herself, she descried Mr Norreys.
“Our dance – the tenth – I believe,” he said, with an exaggeration of indifference, sounding almost as if he wished to irritate her into making some excuse to escape.
In her place nine girls out of ten would have done so, and without troubling themselves to hide their indignation. But Maisie Fforde was not one of those nine. She rose quietly from her seat and took his arm.
“Yes,” she said, “it is our dance.”
Something in her voice, or tone, made him glance at her with a shade more attention than he had hitherto condescended to bestow on “Mrs Englewood’s protégée” She was looking straight before her; her features, which he now discovered to be delicate in outline, and almost faultlessly regular in their proportions, wore an expression of perfect composure; only the slight, very slight, rose-flush on her cheeks would have told to one who knew her well of some inward excitement.
“By Jove!” thought Despard, “she’s almost pretty – no, pretty’s not the word. I never saw a face quite like it before. I suppose I didn’t look at her, she’s so badly, at least so desperately plainly dressed. I don’t, however, suppose she can talk, and I’d bet any money she can’t dance.”
As regarded the first of his predictions, she gave him at present no opportunity of judging. She neither spoke nor looked at him. He hazarded some commonplace remark about the heat of the rooms; she replied by a monosyllable. Despard began to get angry.
“Won’t talk, whether she can or not,” he said to himself, when a second observation had met with no better luck. He glanced round the room; all the other couples were either dancing, or smiling and talking. He became conscious of a curious sensation as disagreeable as novel – he felt as if he were looking ridiculous.
He turned again to his partner in a sort of desperation.
“Will you dance?” he said, and his tone was almost rough; it had entirely lost its usual calm, half-insolent indifference.
“Certainly,” she said, while a scarcely perceptible smile faintly curved her lips. “It is, I suppose, what we are standing up here for, is it not?”
Despard grew furious.