“I don’t think it is worth bothering about,” she answered. “Besides, it is broken off at the head. Never mind the rose; it isn’t a real one. I hope you weren’t horribly bored at dancing with me? I believe you only danced because—”
She paused. Mr Musgrave, still fingering the silken petals of the rose, looked up inquiringly.
“Why do you think I danced?” he asked.
“Because I asked you to,” she answered, smiling.
He smiled too.
“No,” he contradicted. “The idea certainly arose from your suggestion. I doubt whether I should have the courage to inflict myself on anyone as a dance partner without that encouragement. But I had another reason.”
“Tell me,” she said softly, and looked at him with so demure an expression, and then looked away again even more demurely, so that had the vicar chanced upon this tableau also he would assuredly have applied to her the term he had once made use of to his wife in speaking of her; he would have called her a little baggage. But the vicar was not there to see, and John Musgrave rather liked the demure expression. He had an altogether different term for it, which was “womanly.”
“If it interests you to know,” he said, “I had in remembrance the occasion when I declined to oblige you in the matter of the tableaux. I did not desire to appear ungracious a second time.”
“Then,” said Peggy, in a low voice, and still without looking at him, “you danced to please me.”
“You have stated my reason correctly this time,” John Musgrave answered quietly. “I wanted to please you.”