“Very wawm, Miss Kettering,” observes the dandy, holding steadily by his starboard moustache. “Guyville people always make it so hot. Charming bouquet!”
“Your vis-à-vis is dancing alone,” says Blanche, cutting short her partner’s interesting remarks, and sending him sprawling and swaggering across the room, only to hasten back again and proceed with his conversation.
“You know the man opposite—man with red whiskers? That’s Mount Helicon. Good fellow—aw—if he could but dye his whiskers. Asked to be introduced to you to-day on the course. Told him—aw—I couldn’t take such a liberty.” Lacquers wishes to say he would like to keep her society all to himself, but, as usual, he cannot express clearly what he means, so he twirls his moustaches instead, and is presently lost in the intricacies of “La Poule.” We need hardly observe that manœuvring is not our friend’s forte. Blanche’s eyes meanwhile are turned steadily towards the lower end of the room, and her partner’s following their direction, he discovers, as he thinks, a fresh topic of conversation. “Ah! there’s Hardingstone just come in—aw. Why don’t he bring his wife with him, I wonder!”
“His wife!” repeated Blanche, with a start that sent the blood from her heart; “why, he’s not married, is he?” she added, with more animation than she had hitherto exhibited.
“Don’t know, I’m sure,” replied the dandy, glancing down at his own faultless chaussure; “thought he was—aw—looks like a married man—aw.”
“Why should you think so?” inquired Blanche, half amused in spite of herself.
“Why—aw,” replied the observant reasoner, “got the married look, you know. Wears wide family boots—aw. Do to ride the children on, you know.”
Blanche could not repress a laugh; and the quadrille being concluded, off she went with Cousin Charlie, to stagger through a breathless polka, just at the moment the “family boots” bore their owner to the upper end of the room in search of her.
Frank was out of his element, and thoroughly uncomfortable. Generally speaking, he could adapt himself to any society into which he happened to be thrown, but to-night he was restless and out of spirits; dissatisfied with Blanche, with himself for being so, and with the world in general. “What a parcel of fools these people are,” thought he, as with folded arms he leant against the wall and gazed vacantly on the shifting throng; “jigging away to bad music in a hot room, and calling it pleasure. What a waste of time, and energy, and everything. Now, there’s little Blanche Kettering. I did think that girl was superior to the common run of women. I fancied she had a heart, and a mind, and ‘brains,’ and was above all the petty vanities of flirting, and fiddling, and dressing, which a posse of idiots dignify with the name of society. But no; they are all alike, giddy, vain, and frivolous. There she is, dancing away with as light a heart as if ‘Cousin Charlie’ were not under orders for the Cape, and to start to-morrow morning. She don’t care—not she! I wonder if she will marry him, should he ever come back. I have never liked to ask him, but everybody seems to say it’s a settled thing. How changed she must be since we used to go out in the boat at St. Swithin’s; and yet how little altered she is in features from the child I was so fond of. It’s disappointing!” And Frank ground his teeth with subdued ferocity. “It’s disgusting! She’s not half good enough for Charlie. I’ll never believe in one of them again!”