The guests were dancing by eight o'clock to the strains of the domestic piano, the polka and the schottische and the varsoviana alternating with quadrilles and lancers, the waltz a stately gyration round and round. They were not staled and blasé, those simple people, but as fresh as children for the game in hand. They had time to play it then. Whole love stories were enacted in a night, and there was one in which I played a part which I was too young to appreciate at the time, and of which that handsome girl of the house opposite was the heroine. In my ringlets and sandalled shoes, my full-skirted book-muslin frock and blue sash and shoulder-knots—a little spoiled child allowed to see the fun for an hour or two when she ought to have been in bed—I was passed from knee to knee, petted to my heart's content by the adult guests, the gentlemen especially; and the festive scene is as clear before me now as it was then. The drawing-room was festooned with wreaths of evergreen and paper flowers, out of which branched candles in hidden sconces made of tin; the nursery guard was before the fire; the mirror with the gilt eagle on the top reflected moving figures that had space to swim in the mazy dance without jostling each other.
"Do you see that lady in the white dress?" a whiskered nurse of mine whispered in my ear.
I did—I see her now—her dark eyes flashing, dark cheek glowing, deep breast visibly swelling with the triumph of the hour—the undoubted belle of the ball. Her dress was of white tulle, flounced to the waist and trimmed with a long spray, running obliquely from neck to hem, of white artificial roses sprinkled with glass dewdrops. A cluster of the same was set in her abundant dusky hair.
"I want you to take something to her," said he, fumbling. "Don't show it to anybody, and don't give it to anybody but her."
He closed my little fist over a wad of folded paper, and I dodged through the crowd and delivered it, and returned to report.
"Did she read it?"
"Yes."
"Did she say anything?"
"No."
"Didn't she take any notice at all?"