"I'm not a dancing man," said he, "though my eight-and-twenty friends are. I cannot see the pleasure of being hustled about in a hot room with a girl I never saw before in my life, and never want to see again,--who is looking beyond me all the time, watching the door for another fellow who never comes."
"Then why on earth do you go?" asked Miss Bruce simply.
"You know why," he answered in a low voice, without raising his eyes to her face.
"O! I dare say," replied Maud; but though it was couched in a tone of banter, the smile that accompanied this pertinent remark seemed to afford Dick unbounded satisfaction.
Mrs. Stanmore looked up from her writing-table.
"I can't get on while you two are jabbering in that corner." (She had not heard a word either of them said.) "I'll take my visiting-list up-stairs. You can put these cards in envelopes and direct them. It will help me a little, but you're neither of you much use."
She gathered her materials together, and was leaving the room. Dick's heart began beating to some purpose; but his step-mother stopped at the door and addressed her niece.
"By the bye, Maud, I'd almost forgotten. I'm going to Rose and Brilliant's. Fetch me your diamonds, and I'll take them to be cleaned. I can see the people myself, you know, and make sure of your having them back in time for the ball."
The girl turned white. Dick saw it, though his mother did not. He observed, too, that she gasped as if she was trying to form words which would not come.
"I am not going to wear them." She got it out at last with difficulty.