Hicks caressed the golden moustache, and watched him as he moved easily through the gay, heedless throng—a sturdy, strong young figure, full of manhood, full of purpose, the absurdly meek eyes shunning rather than seeking the many glances of recognition that met him on his way.
He went up to his hostess, and with her came apparently straight to the point, for Hicks saw the lady listen attentively and then acquiesce with a ready smile.
Nearly half an hour elapsed before Brenda arrived. She was one of a large party, and her programme had been in other hands before Hicks became possessed of it. He glanced keenly down the column of hieroglyphics. The initials were all genuine, but three dances had been kept by a little cross carefully inserted. Hicks obtained two waltzes, and returned the card with his usual self-satisfied smile. He knew that Brenda expected Trist, although she was not looking round as if in search of anybody. But he was fully convinced that there was some mystery on foot. One dance, he had observed, which was marked with a cross, was a square. Trist and Brenda had met by appointment—not as young men meet maidens every night in the year at dances for purposes of flirtation, or the more serious pastime of love-making, but to discuss some point of mutual interest.
As a rival Hicks had no fear of Theodore Trist, who, he argued, was a very fine fellow in his way, but quite without social accomplishments. He was a good dancer—that point he generously admitted—but beyond that he had nothing to recommend him in the eyes of a clever and experienced girl like Brenda, who had had the advantages of association with some of the most talented men of her day, and intimacy with himself, William Hicks. There was only that trivial matter of athletic and muscular superiority, which really carried no great weight with a refined womanly intellect. In a ball-room Theodore Trist, with his brown, grave face, his absorbed eyes, and his sturdy form, was distinctly out of place. He had not even a white waistcoat, wore three studs in the front of his shirt, and sometimes even forgot to sport a flower in his coat. His very virtues (of an old fashion), such as steadfastness, truth, and honesty, prevented him from shining in society. Fortunately, however, for his own happiness he was without vanity, and therefore unconscious of his own shortcomings. It is just within the scope of possibility that he was moved by no ambition to shine in society.
While the first bars of the waltz were in progress, Hicks found Brenda. He had little difficulty in doing so, because he had been watching her. Moreover, she was dressed in black, which was a rare attire in that room. In choosing this sombre garb she had made no mistake; the style suited exactly her slim, strong young form, and in contrast her neck and arms were dazzling in their whiteness.
They began dancing at once, and Hicks was conscious that there was no couple in the room so perfectly harmonious in movement, so skilled, so intensely refined.
'Trist,' he said presently in a confidential way, 'has been here.'
'Indeed!' was the guarded reply, made with pleasant indifference.
'Yes ... Brenda, he and I had a little talk, and, in consequence, he will be absent for some time, but he is coming back.'
'What,' she inquired calmly, 'did you talk about?'