Cecil, valsing round, looked at each turn for his tall figure leaning against the wall. It was an abstracted attitude, and he seemed graver than usual.
"Had she made him unhappy?"—she trusted so—would give the world to read his thoughts.
Some one said, "There is no punishment equal to a granted prayer." Du Meresq was wrapt in speculation as to whether they had really succeeded in getting a wild turkey for supper, which the Mess President was in maddening doubt about the day before.
That blissful moment was at hand, and the room thinned with a celerity born of ennui, I suppose, for very few people are really hungry, yet it is the invariable signal for as simultaneous a rush as of starving paupers when the door of a soup kitchen is opened. To be sure, there are the chaperones, poor things, round whom no "lovers are sighing," and, perhaps, supper is the liveliest time to them—old gentlemen, too, might be allowed some indulgence; but what can be said for dancing men, wasting the precious moments of their partners, while they linger congregated together among the débris and champagne-corks?
"What a clearance," said Bluebell, subsiding, with a fagged air, on to a sofa, as her partner bowed himself off with an eye to business.
"Forward the heavy brigade," said Bertie, motioning to his brother-in-law bearing off Lady Hampshire; "only room for thirty at a time. We must wait, Miss Leigh."
"I am ready to wait. But what have 'we' got to say to it?" said Bluebell, with her Canadian directness.
"Don't speak so unkindly," said Bertie, sentimentally, flinging himself on the sofa by her side. "You don't know all I have suffered this week."
"You certainly disguised it very well," said the girl, with total disbelief in her eyes.
"Do you think I felt nothing when I saw you all day with Vavasour, who every one knows is madly in love with you; and then dancing every dance—not leaving a corner in your programme for me?"