Heavily, heavily beat the raindrops on the window-pane.
‘Never mind,’ says Lady Forster, whom nothing daunts; ‘we’ll have a dance. You love dancing, Susan, don’t you? Come along, then. Take your partners all, and let’s waltz into the music-room.’
In a second Susan finds Captain Lennox’s arm round her waist, and through the halls and the library they dance right into the music-room beyond. After her comes Crosby with Lady Muriel, and after them Lady Forster with—no, not Lord Jack, after all, but Sir William.
And now the big woman whom Susan had noticed at luncheon has seated herself at the piano, and the poet has caught up a fiddle, and if the big woman can do nothing else on earth, she can at least play dance music to perfection, and the poet, ‘poor little fellow,’ as Susan calls him to herself—if he could only have heard her!—does not make too many false notes on the fiddle, so that she dances very gaily, feeling as if her feet are treading on air, and answering Captain Lennox’s whispered honeyed words with soft smiles and hurried breathing. Oh, how lovely it all is! And, oh, how happy Lady Muriel is going to be!
The waltz has come to an end, and now Crosby is standing before her. And now his arm is round her waist, and he—oh yes, there is no doubt of it—he dances even better than Captain Lennox, and it is good of him, too, to spare so much time from the lovely Lady Muriel.
‘Susan,’ says Crosby, as they pause at the end of the room, ‘I consider your conduct distinctly immoral! The way you have been going on—’
‘Who—I?’
‘Yes, you! Don’t attempt to deny it. Your open flirtation with Lennox—’
‘What?’ Susan lifts her dewy eyes to his. Suddenly she breaks into the merriest laughter. ‘You’re too funny for anything,’ says she.
‘Not for another dance, I hope.’ He laughs too, and so gaily. And again his arm is round her, and away they go once more, dancing to the big lady’s happiest strains. There is a conservatory off the music-room, and into this he leads her presently.