Hadria looked astonished. “Have you really taken in what I have just said?”
“Every word of it.”
“And you realise that I mean it, mean it, with every fibre of me.”
“I understand; and I repeat that I shall not be happy until you are my wife. Have what ideas you please, only be my wife.”
She gazed at him in puzzled scrutiny. “You don’t think I am really in earnest. Let us go.”
“I know you are in earnest,” he cried, eagerly following her, “and still I——”
At that moment Harold Wilkins came up to claim Hadria for a promised dance. Temperley gave a gesture of impatience. But Harold insisted, and Hadria walked with her partner into the hall where Mrs. Gordon was now playing a sentimental waltz, with considerable poetic license as to time. As everyone said: Mrs. Gordon played with so much expression.
Temperley stood about in corners watching Hadria. She was flushed and silent, dancing with a still gliding movement under the skilful guidance of her partner.
Temperley tried to win a glance as she passed round, but her eyes were resolutely fixed on the floor.
Algitha followed her sister’s movements uneasily. She had noticed her absence during the last reel, and observed that Temperley also was not to be seen. She felt anxious. She knew Hadria’s emotional susceptibility. She knew Temperley’s convincing faculty, and also Hadria’s uneasy feeling that she had done wrong in allowing the practices to be resumed.