That ball was to be known in Nelson Lodge as the one that killed Miss Caroline, but Miss Caroline had her full share of pleasure out of it. It was the custom in Radstowe to make much of Caroline and Sophia: they were respected and playfully loved and it was not only the middle-aged gentlemen who asked them to dance, and John and Charles Batty were not the only young ones who had the honour of leading them into the middle of the room, taking a few turns in a waltz and returning, in good order, to the throne-like arm-chairs. Francis Sales had their names on his programme, but with him they used the privilege of old friends and preferred to talk.
“You can keep your dancing for Rose and Henrietta,” Caroline said.
“He comes too late for me,” Rose said pleasantly. He gave her something remarkably like one of his old looks and she answered it with a grave one. There was gnawing trouble at her heart. She had watched his meeting with Henrietta. It had been wordless; everything was understood. She had also seen the unhappiness of Charles Batty, and, on an inspiration, she said to him, “Charles, you must take pity on an old maid. I have all these dances to give away.”
For him this dance was to be remembered as the beginning of his friendship with Rose Mallett; but at the moment he was merely annoyed at being prevented from watching Henrietta’s dark head appearing and disappearing among the other dancers like that of a bather in a rough sea. He said, “Oh, thank you very much. Are you sure there’s nobody else? But I suppose there can’t be”; and holding her at arm’s length, he ambled round her, treading occasionally on her toes. He apologized: he was no good at dancing: he hoped he had not hurt her slippers, or her feet.
She paused and looked down at them. “You mustn’t do that to Henrietta. Her slippers are yellow and you would spoil them.”
“She isn’t giving me a single dance!” he burst out. “I asked her to, but I never thought I ought to get a promise. Nobody told me. Nobody tells me anything.”
An icily angry gentleman remonstrated with him for standing in the fairway and Rose suggested that they should sit down.
“You see, I’m no good. I can’t dance. I can’t please her.”
“Charles, you’re still in the way. Let us go somewhere quiet and then you can tell me all about it.”
He took her to a small room leading from the big one. “I’ll shut the door,” he said, “and then we shan’t hear that hideous din.”