“Indeed I do,” she rejoined brightly. “Your dancing couldn’t be improved.”
Irving kept silence. He was entirely aware that he was beginning exactly as Betsy had implored him not to do; but he began to suspect shrewdly that Betsy’s lecture was a shield which had two sides, and that one of them had been presented to this girl. Hadn’t his mentor said that Rosalie—and the latter’s totally changed manner—
“Betsy will end by making a conceited ass out of me,” he reflected, with the relief human nature finds in discovering some one else to blame for its discomfort.
The dance over, he took his partner out on the veranda, where couples were promenading in the damp coolness. He found some chairs in a remote corner.
“These are tolerably dry,” he said. “Shall we sit here?”
“I mustn’t,” she answered.
“Why not? Too cold?”
“Not for me, but too damp for my gown.”
Irving glanced over it in the dusk. “I have an idea that that is something pretty fine,” he said. “I want to see the black one.”
Rosalie colored. “Shame on Betsy!” she said, laughing. “Has she told everybody?”