"But surely you were under a promise to keep some for me? I asked you a week ago."
"Did you? I am sure I never promised anything of the kind."
"Here is only one little shabby waltz left," said the Captain, looking at her programme. "May I put my name down for that?"
"If you like," answered Vixen indifferently; and then, with the faintest suspicion of malice, she added, "as mamma does not dance round dances."
She was standing up for the Lancers presently, and her partner had just led her to her place, when she saw that she had her mother and Captain Winstanley again for her vis-à-vis. She grew suddenly pale, and turned away.
"Will you let me sit this out?" she said. "I feel awfully ill."
Her partner was full of concern, and carried her off at once to a cooler room.
"It is too bad!" she muttered to herself. "The Lancers! To go romping round with a lot of wild young men and women. It is as bad as the Queen in Hamlet."
This was the last dance before supper. Vixen went in to the supper-room presently with her attentive partner, who had kept by her side devotedly while the lively scramble to good old English tunes was going on in the dancing-room.
"Are you better?" he asked tenderly, fanning her with her big black fan, painted with violets and white chrysanthemums. "The room is abominably hot."