"Oh, there you are," cries he jovially. "Been looking for you everywhere. The music has begun; first dance just forming. Gay and lively quadrille, you know—country ball wouldn't know itself without a beginning like that. Come; come on."
Nothing can exceed his bonhomie. He tucks her hand in the most delightfully genial, appropriative fashion under his arm, and with a beaming nod to Mr. Browne (he never forgets to be civil to anybody) hurries Joyce out of the room, leaving the astute Dicky gazing after him with mingled feelings in his eye.
"Deuce and all of a smart chap," says Mr. Browne to himself slowly. "But he'll fall through some day for all that, I shouldn't wonder."
Meantime Mr. Beauclerk is still carrying on a charming recitative.
"Such a bore!" he is saying, with heartfelt disgust in his tone. It is really wonderful how he can always do it. There is never a moment when he flags. He is for ever up to time as it were, and equal to the occasion. "I'm afraid you rather misunderstood me just now, when I said I'd been looking for you—but the fact is, Browne's such an ass, if he knew we had made an appointment to meet in the library, he'd have brayed the whole affair to any and every one."
"Was there an appointment?" says Miss Kavanagh, who is feeling a little unsettled—a little angry with herself perhaps.
"No—no," with a delightful acceptation of her rebuke. "You are right as ever. I was wrong. But then, you see, it gave me a sort of joy to believe that our light allusion to a possible happy half-hour before the turmoil of the dance began might mean something more—something——Ah! well never mind! Men are vain creatures; and after all it would have been a happy half-hour to me only!"
"Would it?" says she with a curious glance at him.
"You know that!" says he, with the full and earnest glance he can turn on at a second's notice without the slightest injury to heart or mind.