It is a very curious and obsolete, if singularly charming, performance, full of strange bows, and unexpected turnings, and curtseys dignified and deep.
As she advances and retreats, with her svelte figure drawn to its fullest height, and her face eager and intent upon the business in hand, and with her whole heart thrown apparently into the successful accomplishment of her task, she is looking far lovelier than she herself is at all aware.
Even Lady Rodney for the moment has fallen a prey to her unpremeditated charms, and is leaning forward anxiously watching her. Jack and Sir Nicholas are enchanted.
The shadows close them in on every side. Only the firelight illumines the room, casting its most brilliant and ruddy rays upon its central figures, until they look like beings conjured up from the olden times, as they flit to and fro in the slow mysterious mazes of the dance.
Mona's waxen arms gleam like snow in the uncertain light. Each movement of hers is full of grace and verve. Her entire action is perfect.
"Her feet beneath her petticoat
Like little mice, stole in and out,
As if they feared the light.
And, oh! she dances such a way,
No sun upon an Easter day
Is half so fine a sight."
The music, soft and almost mournful, echoes through the room; the feet keep time upon the oaken floor; weird-like the two forms move through the settled gloom.
The door at the farthest end of the room has been opened, and two people who are as yet invisible stand upon the threshold, too surprised to advance, too enthralled, indeed, by the sight before them to do so.
Only as Mrs. Geoffrey makes her final curtesy, and Geoffrey, with a laugh, stoops forward to kiss her lips instead of her hand, as acknowledgment of her earnest and very sweet performance, thereby declaring the same to have come to a timely end, do the new-comers dare to show themselves.
"Oh, how pretty!" cries one of them from the shadow as though grieved the dance has come so quickly to an end "How lovely!"