"Foolish thing! Is it not Christmas night, and are you not the belle of the ball?" And he held out his arm and they whirled off. It gave him immense pleasure to hold her in his embrace—but something in the scent of the violets in his scarlet hunt coat brought back to Katherine with a sickening thrill of anguish and longing the remembrance of Lord Algy and the Saturday night in Paris when they had danced in masks and dominoes at a Bal Tabarin. Oh! the pain of it!—Suddenly the whole present melted away from her—the dreams of the future, the pride in her conquest of the past! The passionate woman in her cried aloud in wild longing for him, Algy—her darling, her dearly-loved mate! How plain were these other young men!—How tired and old Gerard Strobridge looked! At that moment she would have thrown her whole ambitions away into nothingness, to be clasped once more to Algy's heart! Her cheeks became ashen white and her strange eyes grew shadowed and fierce, and Gerard Strobridge was brought up sharply out of his intoxication of emotion by the look in her face.
"What is it, child?" he asked anxiously, holding her close.
"Let me go—let me go!" she cried wildly, breaking from him near the staircase recess. "I—I—cannot bear it—I would like to get out of all this!"
He was intensely astonished, but he saw that she was trembling, and well as he knew women he could not fathom the reason of this strange outburst. Katherine recovered her composure almost immediately and gave a short mirthless laugh.
"I am awfully stupid," she faltered. "I cannot think what came over me. I believe it must be because I am unaccustomed to parties, and it is getting late."
"It is not yet eleven o'clock—but come and have something to drink—I see a tray down there in the long hall," and she let him lead her to it and pour out some champagne and seltzer for her, and then they sat down.
He saw very well that something had deeply moved her, and his perfect tact would not permit him to refer to the occurrence, but caused him rather to talk soothingly of ordinary things—and in a few minutes he saw that the normal whiteness had come back to her face. But nothing would induce her to dance any more, and although she continued doing whatever was expected of her during the rest of the evening—and snatched flaming raisins in the snapdragon with dashing indifference to pain—he knew that she was doing it all as an automaton, and that the living, vital, magnetic Katherine was no longer there, and that this pale, quiet girl whose hand he held presently in the deserted corridor was only too glad to say good-night.
"Dear child," he whispered, as he kissed it with homage, "I don't know what it was that caused it, but you have evidently seen a ghost, and now go to bed, and forget everything but that we have all had an awfully happy Christmas, and I want to tell you how pleased I am that you have worn my flowers to-night."
"—Your flowers! Oh! yes, I ought to have thanked you for them before—they were lovely, but now they are dead," and she unpinned them carelessly—almost as if she did not like them any longer to touch her—and threw them in the big open grate.
"Good-night—and thank you for your kindness," and she was off down the passage and up the side stairs.