She had a high, staglike carriage of the head, and as she was rather tall, she looked over most of her girl companions. Halfway through the dance she raised this dark head a little higher and stared.
"Who is that man?" she asked abruptly.
"Elliot Lestrange," the girls told her, "but he doesn't care for women. He's very proud."
"I should like to meet him," she said simply.
They tittered and teased her, but after all, she was a belle, and Mr. Lestrange was sent for. The young dancing man who undertook the message told freely how Lestrange had said,
"Oh, hang it all, I'm not dancing to-night!"
"But she's Miss Appleyard, of Boston and New York—she's a beauty!"
"Then she must have plenty of beaux, Clarke, without me!"
So young Mr. Clarke took his little revenge (for after all, he had used his dance with the dark beauty for this stupid errand and resented it), and in presenting the chilly hero, said maliciously,
"Here is Mr. Lestrange, Miss Appleyard—but he says you must have plenty of beaux without him!"