"If she needs looking after, I do not wish for her," he answers, bitterly, and the next moment could kill himself, in that he has been so far wanting in loyalty to his most disloyal love.
With his mind quite made up, he waits through two dances silently, almost motionless, with his back against a friendly wall, hardly taking note of anything that is going on around him, until such time as he can claim another dance from Molly.
It comes at last: and, making his way through the throng of dancers, he reaches the spot where, breathless, smiling, she sits fanning herself, an adoring partner dropping little honeyed phrases into her willing ear.
"This is our dance," Luttrell says, in a hard tone, standing before her, with compressed lips and a pale face.
"Is it?" with a glance at her card.
"Never mind your card. I know it is ours," he says, and, offering her his arm, leads her, not to the ball-room, but on to a balcony, from which the garden can be reached by means of steps.
Before descending he says,—always in the same uncompromising tone:
"Are you cold? Shall I fetch you a shawl?"
And she answers:
"No, thank you. I think the night warm," being, for the moment, carried away by the strangeness and determination of his manner.