“Ah! do not be so cruel,” exclaimed the governor, catching her horse’s bridle. “The hunt will have no pleasures for me, if you desert me. Pray remove that glove that I may see your hand. Ah, it is still unfettered.” He caught the white hand and pressed it to his lips. “May I, dare I hope, that this little hand shall be mine for——”
Miss Marchon turned away her head, so that he should not see the smile of triumph on her lips. Here was a proposal worth accepting, but she would not make haste to jump at it too quickly. She must appear diffident, coy, and quite innocently maidenish, although she had passed the rubicon some time before and was anything but an amateur in conducting love affairs to the desired point. His finishing words, however, brought her reverie to the ground with a thud, which she felt if no one else did, and she could have struck him in the face as he wound up with—“several dances at the ball to-night?”
For a moment she lost her head and came near bursting into tears. How glad she was that she had turned her head away. When she did look toward him her face was wreathed in smiles, and with a bewitching gesture, she replied: “As many dances as you wish dear governor. How can I refuse when asked in such a charming manner? But see, our party is already at the field. We are way in the rear. Come, let us hasten, or they will start without us.
And so ended the brief dream of Miss Marchon of some day becoming a governor’s lady, for he never proposed, but rode away when the fetê was ended, and she never saw him more.
Andrew opened the ball that night with Miss Marchon, and her unwilling ears were obliged to listen, while he berated the custom which tabooed him from dancing the first figure with his wife. Victoria, feeling happier than at any time since her marriage, was dancing with the governor, and as Andrew watched the face so dear to him, and noted every changing mood from grave to gay, from laughter to serious thought, he did not regret the step he had taken in throwing open his doors to this “howling mob,” as he called it, much as it was distasteful to him. He watched the governor as he bent in a most lover-like attitude over Victoria, and although he knew that Victoria was no flirt, yet the attention of any man toward his wife stirred something within him which if not exactly jealousy was very near akin to it. What man but himself had a right to clasp that slender waist, or press the exquisite figure of his loved one, perhaps with more tenderness than was at all necessary. He could hardly wait for the figure to be ended, so eager was he to join his wife, and with scarcely a word he led Miss Marchon to a seat, and crossed the room to where Victoria sat surrounded by a crowd of gallants.
She looked up with a bright smile as Andrew approached. “How charmingly Miss Marchon and you dance together,” she said, as he bent over her. “Is she not royally beautiful? I call her the most beautiful and the best dressed lady here.”
“I had not thought of her beauty,” replied Andrew, glancing at the sweet, serious face of Victoria, “and as for her costume I cannot tell you whether it be black or white. All women look alike to me save one, Victoria. That one I have deified. She stands a queen among her lesser satellites, and overshadows them all.”
Victoria looked up into her husband’s face. His eyes were full of slumbering passion, ready to burst into flame at a kind word from her. The other men had left them alone as Andrew began speaking to his wife, and somehow, as Victoria caught the fire in her husband’s eyes, something which she had not felt before stirred within her. A tremor, delicious in its vagueness, shot through her veins, and she thought: “Can this be love which I feel coming to me? Love for a man whom I have said I hated?” She laid her fan upon his arm. “How much you do love me, Andrew? I wonder if there be another man in this ball-room who is saying such devoted words to his wife as I am hearing?”
“No,” replied Andrew, “for no man loves his wife with the strength of passion which you inspire in me. Plenty are devoting themselves to the entertainment of other men’s wives, leaving their own neglected, or to be led into a flirtation which belittles them in the eyes of serious people. The men are vain and careless of the reputation of those who should be the most cherished by them. The women are silly and frivolous, and so the world moves on, and this reminds me that I have a request to ask of you, my darling. Will you dance with nobody but me to-night? I do not care for any partner but your sweet self, and you may deem me very silly, but I cannot see you in the arms of any one of these men who are so inferior to you, without a jealous pang.”
Victoria laughed. “What an idea, Andrew. Would you monopolize your wife at your own ball? What will people say?”