'Would you let me come with you a little while! Look here'—and she crept softly around to the other side of her sister, sidling with little steps away from the Frenchman, at whom, however, she kept furtively looking, as though she feared that he would detect her in the act. 'Look here, Gertrude,' she said, twitching her sister's arm; 'that gentleman there—you see him, don't you? he's a Frenchman, and I don't know how to get away from him.'
'How to get away from him?' said Gertrude. 'That's M. Delabarbe de l'Empereur, a great friend of Mrs. Val's, and a very quiet sort of man, I believe; he won't eat you.'
'No, he won't eat me, I know; but I can't look at anything, because he will walk so close to me! Mayn't I come with you?'
Gertrude told her she might, and so Katie made good her escape, hiding herself from her enemy as well as she could behind her sister's petticoats. He, poor man, was perhaps as rejoiced at the arrangement as Katie herself; at any rate he made no attempt to regain his prey, but went on by himself, looking as placidly stern as ever, till he was absorbed by Mrs. Val's more immediate party, and then he devoted himself to her, while M. Jaquêtanàpe settled with Clementina the properest arrangement for the waltzes of the evening.
Katie was beginning to be tranquilly happy, and was listening to the enthusiasm of Ugolina Neverbend, who declared that flowers were the female poet's fitting food—it may be doubted whether she had ever tried it—when her heart leaped within her on hearing a sharp, clear, well-known voice, almost close behind her. It was Charley Tudor. After her silent promenade with M. Delabarbe de l'Empereur, Katie had been well pleased to put up with the obscure but yet endurable volubility of Ugolina; but now she felt almost as anxious to get quit of Ugolina as she had before been to shake off the Frenchman.
'Flowers are Nature's chef-d'oeuvre,' said Ugolina; 'they convey to me the purest and most direct essence of that heavenly power of production which is the sweetest evidence which Jehovah gives us of His presence.'
'Do they?' said Katie, looking over her shoulder to watch what Charley was doing, and to see whether he was coming to notice her.
'They are the bright stars of His immediate handiwork,' said Ugolina; 'and if our dim eyes could read them aright, they would whisper to us the secret of His love.'
'Yes, I dare say they would,' said Katie, who felt, perhaps, a little disappointed because Charley lingered a while shaking hands with Mrs. Val and Clementina Golightly.
It was, however, but for a moment. There was much shaking of hands to be done, and a considerable taking off of hats to be gone through; and as Alaric and Charley encountered the head of the column first, it was only natural that they should work their way through it gradually. Katie, however, never guessed—how could she?—that Charley had calculated that by reaching her last he would be able to remain with her.