He muttered something, which sounded like "Just a little better than anything else on earth, that's all"; but of course it couldn't really have been what my ears tried to make my vanity believe.
When we stopped—which we didn't do while there was music to go on with—I was conscious that people were looking at us, and nobody with more interest than the Duchesse de Melun. I glanced hastily away before my eye had quite caught hers; but no female thing needs to give a whole eye to what is going on around her. I knew, although my back was soon turned in her direction, that the Duchesse de Melun was talking to Lady Turnour, and I guessed the subject of the conversation. Thank goodness, my mistress's mind had never compassed more than a misleading "Elise," and thank goodness, also, many of the great folk were preparing to leave us humble ones to ourselves, now that their condescension had been proved in the first dance. Would the duchess go? Yes—oh joy!—she gets up from her seat. She moves toward the door. Lady Turnour has risen too, but sits down again, lured by the proximity of a princess. All will be well, perhaps! The duchess mayn't think of catechizing Bertie, now that my mistress has put her off the track. He, with several other young men, evidently means to stop and see the fun out. If only he would sit still, now, beside the marquise! But no. Miss Nelson and the Duc de Divonne are going out together. Bertie must needs jump up and dash across the room for a word with the girl. Discouraged by some laughing answer flung over her shoulder, he almost bumps against the duchess. Horror! She speaks to him quite eagerly. She puts a question. He replies. She bends her head near to him. They walk slowly out of the room, talking, talking. All is up with Lys d'Angely! The next thing that Meddlesome Matty of a duchess will do, is to wire Cousin Catherine Milvaine. Crash! thunder—lightning—hail!—Monsieur Charretier on my track again.
I resolved, as I saw myself lying shattered at my own feet, to pick up the bits and say nothing to Jack, lest he should blame his own inadvertent dropping of my name for all present and future mischief. Being a man, he can see things only with his eyes; and as he happened to be looking at me, he missed the pantomime at the other end of the room. I was looking at him too, but of course that didn't prevent me from seeing other things; and while I was chatting with him, and wondering how long it might be before the thunderbolt (Monsieur Charretier) should fall, I received another invitation to dance. This time it was from a delightful old boy who looked sixty and felt twenty-one.
He was ruddy-brown, with tight gray curls on his head, and deep dimples in his cheeks. If anyone had told me that he was not an English admiral I should have known it was a fib.
"I hope you aren't engaged for this next waltz?" said he. "I should like very much to have it with you." And he spoke as nicely as he would to a young girl of his own world, although he must have heard from someone that I was a lady's maid.
I glanced at Jack, but evidently he approved of admirals as partners for his sister. He kept himself in the background, smiling benevolently, and I skipped away with my brown old sailor, as the music for the dance began.
"Heard you spoke English," said he, encircling my Directoire waist with the arm of a sea-going Hercules, "otherwise I shouldn't have had the courage to come up and speak to you."
I laughed. "A Dreadnought afraid of a fishing-smack!"
"My word, if you were a fishin'-smack, my little friend, you wouldn't lack for fish to catch," chuckled the old gentleman, who was waltzing like an elderly angel—as all sailors do. Now, if Bertie had said what he said, I should have been offended, but coming from the admiral it cheered me up.