Nearly an hour later Mr. Comyn came up the wide stairway. His arrival was most inopportune, for he came in excellent time to see Miss Marling bestow one of her pink roses on the ecstatic Vicomte de Valmé.
She was standing just outside the ballroom, and she did not immediately perceive Mr. Comyn. The Vicomte took the rose reverently, and pressed it to his lips. He then bestowed it carefully inside his coat, and informed Miss Marling that it caused his heart to beat more strongly.
Miss Marling laughed at him, and at the same moment caught sight of Mr. Comyn. She had never seen so stern an expression on his face, and she was secretly rather frightened. She made the grave mistake of trying to brazen it out, and greeted him with a careless nod. “I vow I had quite given you up, sir!” she said.
“Yes?” said Mr. Comyn, icily civil. “Pray will you spare me five minutes alone, ma’am?”
Juliana gave a little shrug, but she dismissed the Vicomte. She showed Mr. Comyn a mutinous face, and said with a coldness that matched his: “Well, sir?”
“It does not seem to me to be well at all, Juliana. You could not bring yourself to forgo one ball to please me.”
“Pray do not be absurd, Frederick!” she said sharply. “Why should I forgo it?”
“Merely because I begged you to, ma’am. Had you loved me — ”
She was jerking her handkerchief between her fingers. “You expect a deal too much of me.”
“Is it too much, then, to expect that you would prefer an evening spent in my company to one here?”