They sat in silence for a few minutes while she finished her chocolate, and while he summed up the situation. Then she rose hastily.
"I have been keeping you from your friends," she said.
"Oh, I have no friends here."
"Why, everybody was becking and bowing to you."
"I am on becking and bowing terms with everybody; but most of us hate each other. Let me get you some more chocolate."
"No, thank you. I must go back to my father."
They had not far to go. Thornton was at a table on the other side of the room, drinking punch with one of his patrons in the book trade, a junior partner who was frivolous enough to look in at Mrs. Mandalay's.
"Miss Thornton is so unkind as to fleer at our solemnities," said Kilrush, "and swears she will never come here again."
"I told her she was a fool to wish to come," answered Thornton. "Your lordship has been uncommonly civil to take care of her. What the devil should a Grub Street hack's daughter do here? She has never had a dancing-lesson in her life."
"She ought to begin to-morrow. Serise would glory in such a pupil. Give her but the knack of a minuet, and she would show young peeresses how to move like queens, or like a swan gliding on the current."