But she avoided them all, and sprang in as if she had not been dancing for four hours, and throwing herself back into the corner, exclaimed:
“Thank goodness, that is over. Poor old Fellowes! you are worn out. Confess it.”
“I am rather tired, my dear,” said Mrs. Fellowes, who had been sitting against a wall all the evening.
“Tired! of course you are; it’s ever so much more tiring looking on than dancing, and joining in the giddy round. I don’t feel a bit tired; I’m a little bored.”
“Bored! what a word, my dear Bell,” murmured Mrs. Fellowes, sleepily.
“It’s a good word—it’s an expressive word—and it just means really what I feel.”
“And yet you received more attention than any woman—any girl—in the room, my dear,” murmured Mrs. Fellowes.
“My money-bags may have done so,” said Lady Bell, scornfully; “not I. Do you think that if I were as penniless as one of Lady Southerly’s daughters, I should receive as much attention? Fellowes, don’t you take to flattering me. I couldn’t stand that.”
“I don’t want to flatter you, my dear Bell; but when the prince himself dances twice with you——”
“Of course he did. I am a celebrity. I am the richest young woman in the kingdom, and he would have done it if I had been as ugly as sin—which isn’t ugly, by the way.”