“Not in the least. Do you?” Louie replied.
“Indeed, I don’t. I’d rather be here, where it is cool, than in rooms as hot as those must be, with all the people, to say nothing of the gas,” Fred answered, leaning back in the carriage, with a feeling that he could stay there for hours watching Louie’s face, on which the lights of the lanterns and the moonbeams fell, bringing out every point of beauty and making it very fair and sweet.
Fred Lansing, as a rule, did not care particularly for women—that is, he did not care for any particular woman. He knew that if he chose he could have his choice among the best of his acquaintances, and possibly this was a reason why he had no choice. He did not like to feel that every girl he talked with was thinking of him as a possible husband, and that every mother to whom he was polite was hoping he might be her son-in-law. As Fred Lansing, with a large fortune already at his disposal, and a larger one when his mother died, and as the scion of one of the oldest and best families in the South on his father’s side, to say nothing of the White pedigree on his mother’s side, he was not insensible to his value as a desirable parti, but he never presumed upon it. To be a man whom every one could respect, independent of his money or position, was his object, and if he at times seemed cold and reserved, it was not from pride or a sense of his superiority, but rather from indifference, if not from contempt for the deference amounting sometimes to toadyism, paid to him because he was Fred Lansing. Louie had not seemed at all overawed or impressed, even when she found herself in his arms on her return to consciousness in the bank. She had only turned her face away with a flush, as a timid child might have done if caught in some questionable act, and had said: “Oh, I didn’t mean it! I am sorry.”
Some girls whom he knew would have affected a vast amount of modesty and self-consciousness, but Louie was sensible, and he didn’t believe she thought half as much of lying in his arms as he had of having her there. He could feel the pressure of her small head yet, with its mass of crumpled hair, and see the death-white face, which had looked so pathetic in its unconsciousness, and which, had he been of a different temperament, he might have wanted to kiss. As it was, he had had no thought of it. In her helplessness she was sacred in his eyes; and even now, when she sat beside him in the moonlight, her eyes as bright as the stars overhead and her face glowing with excitement, he did not know that there was any thought of love in his mind. He only felt that she attracted him as no other girl had ever done. She was so natural and innocent, and so filled with anticipation of what was in store for her if they ever reached the house. Near it a large platform had been erected for the band, which, when the White carriage came up, had just struck up a lively strain, to which Louie kept time with her head and feet and hands.
“Oh, I could dance till morning and not feel tired a bit,” she said. “I like it so much, and I hope somebody will ask me.”
Fred was not very fond of dancing; it was too hard work, he thought, and he was prudish enough not to fancy the way some girls had of “making a pillow out of a fellow’s arm or bosom,” as he had expressed it to some of his acquaintances who had rallied him for refusing to join in a waltz, and who enjoyed being made pillows for the heads of their fair partners. Now, however, he suddenly changed his mind. He wanted to dance, and be not only a pillow, but bolster, too, if necessary; and to what seemed like a challenge, although he knew it was not meant for that, he responded at once.
“I will ask you now. What shall it be—round or square, or both?”
“Oh, the two-step, if you know it,” she answered, with a laugh. “I could dance that forever. If you don’t like that, the lancers.”
“We’ll have both,” Fred said, with a shiver, as he knew he might not be able to acquit himself creditably in the two-step, which he had never tried but once, and had then failed miserably. “But she will keep me going,” he thought, as he lifted her from the carriage and led her into the house.