"I was very wrong in many ways," I heard her whisper. For almost the first time I saw her perturbed. Helena von Ritz stepped close to her. Amid the crash of the reeds and brasses, amid all the broken conversation which swept around us, I knew what she said. Low down in the flounces of the wide embroidered silks, I saw their two hands meet, silently, and cling. This made me happy.
Of course it was Jack Dandridge who broke in between us. "Ah!" said he, "you jealous beggar, could you not leave me to be happy for one minute? Here you come back, a mere heathen, and proceed to monopolize all our ladies. I have been making the most of my time, you see. I have proposed half a dozen times more to Miss Elisabeth, have I not?"
"Has she given you any answer?" I asked him, smiling.
"The same answer!"
"Jack," said I, "I ought to call you out."
"Don't," said he. "I don't want to be called out. I am getting found out. That's worse. Well—Miss Elisabeth, may I be the first to congratulate?"
"I am glad," said I, with just a slight trace of severity, "that you have managed again to get into the good graces of Elmhurst. When I last saw you, I was not sure that either of us would ever be invited there again."
"Been there every Sunday regularly since you went away," said Jack. "I am not one of the family in one way, and in another way I am. Honestly, I have tried my best to cut you out. Not that you have not played your game well enough, but there never was a game played so well that some other fellow could not win by coppering it. So I coppered everything you did—played it for just the reverse. No go—lost even that way. And I thought you were the most perennial fool of your age and generation."
I checked as gently as I could a joviality which I thought unsuited to the time. "Mr. Dandridge," said I to him, "you know the Baroness von Ritz?"
"Certainly! The particeps criminis of our bungled wedding—of course I know her!"