I should have liked to mention the Queen of Sheba to the colonel, but he did not seem a man you could take a liberty with, and I thought better of it. Another lunatic was polite enough to mark the game, and called out the score with such accuracy that I at once set him down as an old billiard-marker.
When we had got through two games the sound of music reached us, and we returned to the drawing-room. The ball was in full progress, and it was a strange sight to see the huge and ungainly figure of our host moving amongst the dancers playing the fiddle. He was evidently an excellent performer, and it was to his music his patients danced. Occasionally he would waltz round the room playing his instrument all the time. His resemblance to the mythical satyr would at once strike an ordinary onlooker.
"A good dance makes people cheerful, and assists my cause," he remarked, as he waltzed past me.
"Many a happy wife has occasion to bless the Blue Danube," he whispered on another occasion.
"Come and see a recent success," he said in one of the short intervals; and I was led up and introduced to a shy-looking little man of fifty, and anything but a reserved young woman of twenty-five, his wife, who both looked happy enough, and seemed perfectly cured. Show patients, I presumed.
"For the encouragement of others," he whispered in my ear. "Won't you dance? There is Miss Bertram disengaged. Most accomplished girl. Daughter of an old friend. A sad history; but I will tell you all about her in my study, for you must smoke a cigar with me before you go."
Until the circumstances were cleared up a bit I considered it advisable not to dance with Miss Bertram or any other lady.
It was a new experience, and I could not be too cautious.