"Yes; I am not the tall, slim English girl."
"I am very glad. We dance so well together; I wish I were not going away so soon. And you can't guess—you will think it strange,—to American ideas it is; but when I go back I have to hunt up a descendant of this grandmother of high degree who has been making matrimonial overtures to my father on my behalf."
"Oh, that is like a story! And what will you do?"
"I will think about it, and answer you when you return to me."
He gave her to the next partner, with a graceful inclination of the head.
There were numberless evolutions before he could take her again. She glanced up out of sweet, questioning eyes.
"I've been considering," he resumed, as if they had not parted. "You see, it is this way. My father is very, very fond of me, though there are other children. Then I have my mother's fortune, which he has been very watchful of. He is a splendid, upright, honourable man. Now, if your father asked such a thing of you,—what I mean is, if he asked you to see some one and learn how well you could like her or him—"
She was off again. Oh, what a sweet little fairy she was! What poet wrote about twinkling feet? Hers certainly twinkled in their daintiness. He had not considered her prettiness at first; now it seemed as if she was exquisitely fair, with that soft pink in her cheeks.
"Yes. Do you not believe you would go to please him, and see? And you might not like her, and she might not like you. But sometimes people do take sudden fancies. What do you think, looking at it out of an American girl's eyes?"
"I should go for my father's sake."