"Oh, Lily! I want to introduce Mr. Whitelaw. He's got the same name as yours, hasn't he? Tom, do ask her to dance."
With her easy touch-and-go she left them to each other. Without a glance at him, Lily said, tonelessly,
"I'm not going to dance any more. I'm going to look for my brother and go home."
A whoop from the other side of the ballroom, where a rowdy note had come over the company, gave an indication of Tad's whereabouts. Tom suggested that he might find him and bring him up. Lily walked away without answering.
Hildred hurried back. "I'm sorry. I saw what she did. Try not to mind it."
"Oh, I don't. I decided long ago that one couldn't afford to be done down by that sort of thing. It pays in the end to forget it."
"One of these days she'll be sorry she did it. Your innings will come then."
"I'm not crazy for an innings. But time does avenge one, doesn't it?" He nodded toward the ballroom floor, where Lily, with a stalking, tip-toeing tread was pushing a man backward as if she would have pushed him down had he not recovered his balance and begun pushing her. "It avenges one even for that. Two minutes ago she said she wasn't going to dance any more."
"Well, she's changed her mind. That's all. Come and take a turn with me."
The affectionate solicitude in her tone was not precisely new to him, but for the first time he dared to wonder if it could be significant. By all the canons of life and destiny she was outside his range. She could take this intimate, sisterly way with him, he had reasoned hitherto, because she was so far above him. She was the Queen; he was only Ruy Blas, a low-born fellow in disguise. If he found himself loving her, if there was something so sterling and womanly in her nature that he couldn't help loving her, that would be his own look-out. He had made up his mind to that before the end of his three weeks in Dublin in the spring. Her tactful camaraderie then had carried him over all the places which in the nature of things he might have found difficult, doing it with a sweet assumption that they had an aim in common. Only they had no aim in common! Between him and her there could be nothing but pity and kindness on the one side, with humility and devotion on the other.