"Violet, play us something," says Geoffrey, who has quite entered into the spirit of the thing, and who doesn't mind his mothers "horrors" in the least, but remembers how sweet Mona used to look when going slowly and with that quaint solemn dignity of hers "through her steps."
"I shall be charmed," says Violet; "but what is a country dance? Will 'Sir Roger' do?"
"No. Play anything monotonous, that is slow and dignified besides, and it will answer; in fact, anything at all," says Geoffrey, largely, at which Violet smiles and seats herself at the piano.
"Well, just wait till I tuck up the tail of my gown," says Mrs. Geoffrey, airily flinging her pale-blue skirt over her white bare arm.
"You may as well call it a train; people like it better," says Geoffrey. "I'm sure I don't know why, but perhaps it sounds better."
"There can be scarcely any question about that," says Lady Rodney, unwilling to let any occasion pass that may permit a slap at Mona.
"Yet the Princess D—— always calls her train a 'tail,'" says Violet, turning on her piano-stool to make this remark, which is balm to Mona's soul: after which she once more concentrates her thoughts on the instrument before her, and plays some odd old-fashioned air that suits well the dance of which they have been speaking.
Then Geoffrey offers Mona his hand, and leads her to the centre of the polished floor. There they salute each other in a rather Grandisonian fashion, and then separate.
The light from the great pine fire streams over all the room, throwing a rich glow upon the scene, upon the girl's flushed and earnest face, and large happy eyes, and graceful rounded figure, betraying also the grace and poetry of her every movement.
She stands well back from Geoffrey, and then, without any of the foolish, unlovely bashfulness that degenerates so often into awkwardness in the young, begins her dance.