"I wish you would come."
"Why should I go? I have already said that I would not."
"As for the invitation that does not signify in the least. Do come just about twelve o'clock. We've got up such a dance, and I should like you to come and see it."
"Who is we?"
"Well;—the parties are not quite arranged yet. I think I'm to dance with Count Costi. Something depends on colours of dress and other matters. The gentlemen are all to be in some kind of uniform. We have rehearsed it, and in rehearsing we have done it all round, one with the other."
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"We weren't to tell till it was settled."
"I mean to go and see it," said the Dean. "I delight in anything of that kind."
Mary was so perfectly easy in the matter, so free from doubt, so disembarrassed, that he was for the moment tranquillised. She had said that she was to dance, not with that pernicious Captain, but with a foreign Count. He did not like foreign Counts, but at the present moment he preferred any one to Jack De Baron. He did not for a moment doubt her truth. And she had been true,—though Jack De Baron and Mrs. Houghton had been true also. When Mary had been last at Mrs. Jones' house the matter had not been quite settled, and in her absence Jack had foolishly, if not wrongly, carried his point with the old lady. It had been decided that the performers were to go through their work in the fashion that might best achieve the desired effect;—that they were not to dance exactly with whom they pleased, but were to have their parts assigned them as actors on a stage. Jack no doubt had been led by his own private wishes in securing Mary as his partner, but of that contrivance on his part she had been ignorant when she gave her programme of the affair to her husband. "Won't you come in and see it?" she said again.
"I am not very fond of those things. Perhaps I may come in for a few minutes."