“The Miss Champernownes are used to such luxuries as oysters, and can’t do without them,” laughed Eve. “My sisters and I have been brought up in a harder manner.”
“Curious, isn’t it, how fashion changes?” said Vansittart, taking her to a little table in the furthest corner of the room—a tiny table that would only just accommodate two people. “When Byron was in society it was considered odious for a young woman to care what she eat, or to have a healthy appetite. Nowadays, it is rather chic for a girl to be a gourmet. We have bread-and-butter Misses affecting a fine taste in dry champagne and a passion for quails. And now what can I get you—mayonnaise lobster, truffled turkey, boar’s head, chicken?”
She decided for chicken, and trifled with a wing while Vansittart sipped a glass of champagne, enchanted to have her all to himself in this corner, wishing that the Caledonians might last for ever, and inclined to be reckless about his engagement for the waltz that was to follow.
“You have been dancing every dance, I think,” he said.
“No; not all. I sat in my corner with Mrs. Ponto all through a most exquisite waltz.”
“Was it possible you had no partner?”
“Mr. Sefton asked me to dance—and I told him I was tired.”
“I have an idea you don’t much like Mr. Sefton?”
“No, he’s not a favourite of mine; but he has always been very kind, and he has given my father some shooting; so I don’t want to be rude to him.”
“Was that why you danced the Lancers with him, after refusing him a dance?”