She leaned back in the luxurious little chair he had given her, and looked across the hall into the room where the waltz was at its height, and, having looked, she laughed.
"Do you see that girl in the white dress, which doesn't fit," she said,—"the plump girl who bags at the waist and is oblivious to it—and everything else but her waltz and her partner?"
"Yes," he responded; "but I hope you are not laughing at her,—there is no need of it. She's having a fascinating time."
"Yes," she returned. "She is having a lively time; but I am not laughing at her, but at what she reminds me of. Do you know, I was just that age when Colonel Tredennis saw me last. I was not that size or that shape, and my dresses used to fit—but I was just that age, and just as oblivious, and danced with just that spirit of enjoyment."
"You dance with just as much enjoyment now," said Arbuthnot, "and you are quite as oblivious at times, though it may suit your fancy just at the present moment to regard yourself as a shattered wreck confronted with the ruins of your lost youth and innocence. I revel in that kind of thing myself at intervals, but it does not last."
"No," she said, opening her fan with a smile, and looking down at the Cupids and butterflies adorning it, "of course it won't last, and I must confess that I am not ordinarily given to it—but that man! Do you know, it was a curious sort of sensation that came over me when I first saw him. I was standing near a window, talking to half-a-dozen people, and really enjoying myself very much,—you know I nearly always enjoy myself,—and suddenly something seemed to make me look up—and there he stood!"
"It would not be a bad idea for him to conceal his pedestal about him and mount it when it became necessary for him to remain stationary," said Arbuthnot, flippantly, and yet with a momentary gravity in his eyes somewhat at variance with his speech.
She went on as if he had not spoken.
"It was certainly a curious feeling," she continued. "Everything came to me in a flash. I suppose I am rather a light and frivolous person, not sufficiently given to reflecting on the passage of time, and suddenly there he stood, and I remembered that eight years had gone by, and that everything was changed."