Agatha looked up. Dr. Darkham, tall, handsome, almost young, was standing beside her.
"I am sorry—but the dance is promised," said Agatha, gently but coldly.
"I am unfortunate." He looked keenly at her, with open question in his eyes. He had educated himself very carefully on the lines of social etiquette; but education of that sort, unless it comes by nature, is often defective and sometimes he forgot. It did not now suggest itself to him that to question Agatha's word, whether that word were true or false, was a bêtise. Some men had come up to ask, Agatha for a dance, and when they were gone he spoke.
"It is promised, then?" he said. "And yet you have only just come?"
Agatha looked at him for a moment as if surprised.
"It is promised," she said again.
She made no attempt to explain herself. Her manner, however, was very quiet, although her face was set and her tone frozen.
Suddenly, however, her expression changed. It lit up with a happy fervour, and her eyes shone. They were looking past Dr. Darkham's towards something beyond, and the latter, as though unable to control his longing to learn the cause of this sweet change in the lovely face before him, turned to follow her glance, and saw over there, making anxious efforts to reach her, a young man rather above middle height, with a face that, if not strictly handsome, was at all events extremely good to look at.
It was Dillwyn, the young doctor who had lately come into the neighbourhood, and who was beginning to do pretty well with a certain class of patients. Not the better classes; those belonged almost exclusively to Darkham.
Dillwyn was still a long way off, hemmed in by a crowd of skirts that now, being a little stiffened at the tail, took up a considerable amount of room and were not easily passed. There was still a moment or two before he could reach Agatha. Darkham caught his opportunity and turned hurriedly to her.