“I do not care about a quadrille,” he said, “but I should like a waltz with you, Lady Hermione.”
She knew in her mind there was nothing she would like so much as a waltz with him; but the natural perversity innate in women came to her now. She looked up at the handsome face, so eloquent with love, the eyes with a love-light shining in them, and she owned to herself that it would be pleasant to have that strong arm thrown around her, and to float with him through fairyland. He looked so tall, so strong, so brave and handsome. Then, to punish herself for the thought, and perhaps with the same delight a cat takes in torturing a mouse, she cast down her eyes and said she was engaged, she feared, for all the waltzes she should be able to dance.
He was forced to be content with the quadrille. Half an hour afterward, lingering under the spreading shade of an oak tree, he saw Miss Severn. Sir Ronald hastened to her. The music was enchanting.
“How can you stand here so quietly, Miss Severn?” he asked. “That music would put a soul even in the leaves of a tree.”
She looked at him with a bright smile.
“The truth is, Sir Ronald, I am forsaken; my partner has forgotten me.”
She looked, still with smiling eyes, to a little group in the small glade—Lady Hermione and Kenelm Eyrle. She would not have told the lie; but her eyes said plainly Kenelm was her partner, and had forgotten her in Lady Hermione’s smiles—a fact that was perfectly untrue, for she was engaged to dance with Captain Langham, who had not forgotten her, but had been suddenly summoned to another part of the grounds.
The impression on Sir Ronald’s mind remained the same. He believed Lady Hermione and Kenelm to be so deeply engrossed in each other as to forget everything else; the consequence of which belief was that he resolved to delay the question he had intended to ask her.
“If Kenelm loves her I will not mar his happiness,” he said to himself, “and yet it seemed to me he liked Miss Severn far the best.”
He remained with Clarice, who rejoiced in the success of her small maneuver. After all, she thought, she had really done no wrong; she had only looked at Mr. Eyrle, and if Sir Ronald chose to misunderstand that look, he must do so—she could not help it.