“No, indeed. I know there is such a place somewhere between here and Portsmouth.”
“You must have passed it, I think. I dare say you sometimes go to Southsea or to the Isle of Wight for your summer holidays.”
“You dare to say too much,” she answered, with her frank, girlish laugh. “We never go anywhere for our summer holidays. We live in the same house all the year round. When a poor man has five daughters he can’t afford to carry them about to seaside lodgings, which are always dreadfully dear in the season, I am told. I think we ought to go back to the ball-room. I am engaged for the next waltz.”
“And I, to a most exacting partner.”
The waltz was half over when they entered the dancing-room, and Hilda Champernowne, who saw them enter side by side, looking very happy, was evidently offended.
“It is hardly worth while standing up,” she said; “the waltz is just over.”
“I thought it had only just begun.”
“That shows how engrossed you must have been.”
“I was giving a young lady some supper, and a young lady who might have starved but for me.”
“Impossible! The young lady was Miss Marchant, whom you yourself pronounced the belle of the ball. Mr. Tivett told me so.”