“You dance beautifully,” Peggy assured him, smiling up into his serious face. “The different figures are a little puzzling to remember. I am enjoying this immensely.”
“Are you?” he said, in some surprise. “It is very kind of you to say so.”
A regard for truth prevented Mr Musgrave from echoing her sentiments: to sacrifice sincerity in an effort to be courteous was not Mr Musgrave’s way; but the knowledge that he was giving her pleasure atoned in a measure for his own lack of enjoyment. That his actions were exciting comment, that heads were turned to watch him, that those in the room who were not dancing were more interested in himself than in the other dancers, was not remarked by him. Mr Musgrave was sufficiently modest to remain unconscious of the attention he received. The dance was to him an ordeal of the utmost gravity, because of his stupidity and his fear of spoiling others’ pleasure in it; it was not, however, a humiliating ordeal, as it might have been to a vainer man. In his absorbed attention he missed the smiles and the glances and the whispered comments; missed Miss Simpson’s flushed displeasure, and the vicar’s amazed and smiling observation of his old friend’s surprising energy; missed, too, his sister’s bright glance of quickened interest, and his brother-in-law’s amused grin.
“Coelebs?” murmured the vicar under his breath, and caught Belle’s eye and smiled at her.
Later he made his way to her, when the room cleared of the dancers and Peggy and her partner disappeared with the stream drifting towards the hall and the conservatory, and other convenient places fitted up for sitting out. Their eyes met in a glance of sympathetic understanding; then Belle linked a hand within his arm and suggested a retreat into the conservatory.
“Is your faith in the power of your sex increasing at all?” he asked, as, having led her to a secluded corner, he seated himself near her, and leaned back in a low chair with an air of thorough enjoyment.
“Ah!” she said, her face turned towards his, amused and retrospective. “You remember that conversation.”
“You did not believe, when you challenged Mrs Chadwick, that she would succeed to the extent we have witnessed to-night,” he said.
Belle became suddenly grave.
“Would you ascribe the success altogether to Mrs Chadwick?” she asked.