"If you will go and tell my maid to bring me a shawl," she answers, indifferently, "I will go with you for a minute."
He returns with a fleecy white wrap, and they stroll away from the "dancers dancing in tune."
[CHAPTER XX.]
Colonel Carlyle soon misses his heart's fair queen from the ball-room, and immediately the whole enchanting scene becomes a desert in his love-lorn eyes. He glances hither and thither; he wanders disconsolately around, yet no flitting glimpse of his snow-maiden rewards his eager eyes. She has vanished as completely from his sight as if a sunbeam had shone down upon and dissolved her into a mist.
"Have you seen Bonnibel anywhere?" he inquires of Felise, meeting her on her partner's arm as he wandered around.
Felise looks up with a low, malicious laugh.
"Bonnibel?" she says. "Oh, yes; she and Byron Penn have been down on the beach this half hour in the moonlight, composing sonnets."
Her partner laughs and hurries her on, leaving the anxious old husband standing in the floor like one dazed. A dozen people standing around have heard the question and its answer. They nod and wink at each other, for Colonel Carlyle's patent jealousy has begun to make him a laughing stock. After a moment he recollects himself and turns away. People wonder if he will go out and confront the sentimental pair, and a few couples, on curiosity bent, stroll out to watch his proceedings. They are rewarded directly, for he comes out and takes his way down the shore.
Felise's assertion of a half an hour is merely a pleasant fiction. It has not been ten minutes since she left the house on the arm of the young poet. They are standing on the beach looking out at the glorious sea, and the young man whose soul is so deeply imbued with poetry that he can think and speak of nothing else, has been telling her what a sweet poem is "Lucille," Owen Meredith's latest. He repeats a few lines, and the girl inclines her head and tries to be attentive.