“Well,” resumed Beatrice, “Captain Swords asked him why he had given up hope. Why was it that he thought the lady didn’t care for him?”
“Yes; yes!”
“Then the other answered him this way: ‘Ralph, it’s all over. I’m just as much a “goner” as a solitary picket cut off and surrounded by a sotnia of Cossacks. You remember, Ralph, the night of the ball—the last one. I danced twice with her that night and twice, as we danced, she looked into my eyes and I could have sworn I saw the love-light there. I was encouraged, Ralph—buoyed up by my fool hopes and went blindly on to the awful ambuscade that lay for me at the end of this lover’s lane I was treading. After the second dance, I walked with her in the great conservatory and there, my brain whirling, I told her—I don’t know what!’”
“‘And she refused you?’ Captain Swords asked.
“‘Refused me!’ the other answered, oh! so sadly; ‘well, she listened to the end and then gave a little laugh, treated it all as a mere jest—a nothing—murmured some words which I was too dazed even to understand—and left me hastily to join her partner for the next dance.’
“‘The cursed coquette!’ I heard Captain Swords say savagely.
“Then the other turned upon Captain Swords fiercely and declared that he wouldn’t hear one word of reproach spoken of her in his presence; that whatever she had done was, beyond question, right; no doubt that was the way of the ladies of the Court, and if rough soldiers, who had spent their lives in camp and field, didn’t properly understand those ways, it was their fault and they ought not to complain.”
“How noble—how generous!” came from the figure in the chair.
“Wasn’t it, Dorothy!” continued Beatrice; “but that’s not all. He said that after the lady had refused him, he remained in the conservatory for some time and then, not very well knowing what he was doing, he wandered back to the ball-room to catch another glimpse of her as she danced with that black-looking devil, Lord Ashley, as he called him. Then he went on to say that as he stood there, Lady Brooke came up and began to talk to him. She drew his attention to the lady and asked him if she and Lord Ashley didn’t make a handsome couple—she so light and he so dark. Lady Brooke said that she thought there would surely be a match, as she had been playing her cards to win Lord Ashley because of his title, and a titled husband was the one thing above everything that the lady had set her heart on.”
“She said that—she said that to him!” cried Dorothy, suddenly sitting upright in her chair.