Viens tôt me secourir, ou me faudra mourir.
At the end of the measure, the advance being ended, the retreat began, the Governor walking behind and leading his partner backward, always with delicately held finger-tips, the raised arm and rounded wrist showing every graceful curve as the girl walked.
"Where did she learn it," wondered Romney, "and she never at Court?"
For Peggy the most trying period in the ordeal was when she was left standing alone while her cavalier, with gliding steps and deep bows, retreated to the centre of the room, where, sweeping a grave circle with his rapier, he faced about and again advanced toward her with the proud peacock-motion that gave the dance its name. At first she had not the courage to look up to his face at all, but kept her eyes fixed upon the scarlet cross-bands embroidered with gold across his breast and the jewel-studded hilt of his rapier.
Apparently His Excellency found the view of her eyelashes and lowered lids unsatisfactory, for as they paced down the room between the rows of gallants he compelled her to look up by asking how she liked Virginia.
"Virginia much, but Virginians more," she answered.
"That is doubly a compliment, coming from a dweller across the border," said the Governor, with a smile. "For our part, whatever quarrels we may have with the men of your province, we are forced to lower our swords before its women. Beauty is the David who slays his tens of thousands, where strength, like Saul, counts its thousands only. It is not every one," he added, with a look which older men permit themselves and call impertinence in a youth,—"it is not every one who can move in a ball-room as if it were her birthright to be admired."
"Thank you," said Peggy, and then blushed crimson. "What a dolt I am," she thought; "as if he meant me!"
To cover her confusion she fixed her eyes upon a soldierly man at the head of the room.
"Can you, who know every one, tell me," she asked, "who is the cavalier who dances with an abstracted air, as though his thoughts were fixed on serious subjects, and his mind only permitted his body to dance on condition that it made no demand on his attention?"