Daisie looked, and Dallas met her glance and waited for recognition, but none came; and he could not see how pale she grew as her eyes wavered and fell.
“Snubbed!” he said to himself indignantly; and it aroused the keenest anger in his breast. What had he done, that neither of the three would recognize him?
And, to add to his injury, Daisie never even looked at him again, though the eyes of the other two strayed to him often in wonder at his likeness to one they had known in the past.
He wondered cynically if Mrs. Fleming had got over her fancy for him as easily as Daisie seemed to have done.
“I will go to the Morton ball and see,” he resolved, in a spirit of audacity.
So, when the opera was over and they were in the crush of the ball, he asked the hostess for an introduction to Mrs. Fleming, and the little blonde beamed with delight when he asked her to dance.
“Lord Werter, I could not keep my eyes off you at the opera. You must have noticed it, and thought it strange. But I was almost certain you were an old friend of mine named Dallas Bain. When Major Mays told me your name, I could hardly believe it,” she twittered.
So that explained her failure to bow? It lifted something from his heart; but he took a whim not to undeceive her yet, not to own his identity, to masquerade under his new splendor.
So he danced with the gay little widow, but his eyes wandered often to Daisie, who was Major Mays’ partner, and danced divinely. It vexed him that she would not even look at him, though she might have done that much for the sake of the likeness to her old love.
“She is heartless. Prosperity has spoiled her,” he thought bitterly, as he leaned against the wall and watched the clear-cut, smiling face so fair and flowerlike.