"You must excuse me, sir," she said coldly.
"Well, then, some time during the evening, at your own pleasure," he urged.
"You must excuse me, sir," she repeated still more frigidly, scarcely glancing at him.
"What do you mean?" he asked insolently, at the same time flushing deeply.
She gave him a cold, quiet look of surprise, and, turning her back upon him, resumed conversation with Harcourt. Lottie was a little indignant and perplexed at this scene; but noted, with a feeling of disgust, that her partner's face, in his anger, had the look of a demon.
But her own reception had been too cool to be agreeable, and this, with the supposed slight to Hemstead, caused Miss Martell to seem to her, for the time, the embodiment of capricious pride.
Harcourt said, "Brently does not seem to be in your good graces, Miss
Martell; and that is strange, for he is the lion of the evening."
"I can well imagine that he belongs to the cat species," she replied. "I have no personal grievance against Mr. Brently, but I do not consider him a gentleman. My father knows that he is not one, and that is enough for me."
Harcourt flushed with both pleasure and shame; and as the next form just then required that he should take his companion's hand, he did so with a cordial pressure, as he said, "Men would be better—I should be better—if all young ladies showed your spirit, Miss Martell."
At the next pause in the dance she said, in a low tone, "Come, let us have no 'ifs.' Be better anyway."