“My life has not so many pleasures that I can afford to forget one of them,” replied Steinmetz, in his somewhat old-fashioned courtesy. “But an old—buffer, shall I say?—hardly expects to be taken much notice of by young ladies at a ball.”
“It is not ten minutes since Paul assured me that you were the best dancer that Vienna ever produced,” said the girl, looking at him with bright, honest eyes.
Karl Steinmetz looked down at her, for he was a tall man when Paul Alexis was not near. His quiet gray eyes were almost affectionate. There was a sudden sympathy between these two, and sudden sympathies are the best.
“Will you give an old man a trial?” he asked. “They will laugh at you.”
She handed him her programme.
“Let them laugh!” she said.
He took the next dance, which happened to be vacant on her card. Almost immediately the music began, and they glided off together. Maggie began with the feeling that she was dancing with her own father, but this wore off before they had made much progress through the crowd, and gave way to the sensation that she had for partner the best dancer she had ever met, gray-haired, stout, and middle-aged.
“I wanted to speak to you,” she said.
“Ah!” Steinmetz answered. He was steering with infinite skill. In that room full of dancers no one touched Maggie’s elbow or the swing of her dress, and she, who knew what such things meant, smiled as she noted it.
“I have been asked to go and stay at Osterno,” she said. “Shall I go?”