Lord Lindsay stole a glance out of the corner of his eyes.
“Phew! sets the wind in that corner. Well, time’s up. That’s a waltz they’re starting and I’m booked.”
When Lord Lindsay and Beaumont reentered the drawing-room Edward sought Eleanor St. Clair to claim the dance she had promised him. He was received with gay rebuke.
“This is the way you fulfil your trust, Mr. Beaumont. Papa makes his bow to the Countess and sidles off incontinent to the sanctum of the Earl. I have no doubt he is at this moment smoking a cigar and discoursing learnedly on the virtues of the Earl’s very particular and precious Madeira to which my lord, they say, is indebted for his very particular and precious gout. It’s a mercy if the wine is so very particular and precious, or I should have papa prostrate with the gout, and from all accounts that would be as bad for me as for him. Deprived of my natural protector I rely, of course, on a certain cavalier from Yorkshire, and, lo! he, too, has vanished, spirited away by Lord Lindsay to his own secret cave, there to demolish institutions, or was it only reputations?”
“As I was being spirited away I caught a vision of a radiant being threading the mazes of the Lancers on the arm of a dashing son of Mars, and looking in need neither of protection nor consolation.”
“I am a woman and therefore can dissemble, Mr. Beaumont; but see, the sets are filling.”
“Do you really want to dance every dance? See how brightly the moon shines above the trees, and the air is still and warm without. Will you not show me the view from the Terrace. It must be lovely at this hour, stretched beneath the harvest moon.”
“Papa will miss me should he tear himself away from the Earl and the Madeira.”
“He will miss me, too, and know you are in safe keeping.”
“H’m, perhaps. Well, it is hot within.”