"That was bad luck, at all events," said Maurice, almost involuntarily.
"Why?" asked Lady Kynaston, looking up at him sharply. But Maurice would not tell her why.
Lady Kynaston asked no more questions; but she pondered, and she watched. Captain Kynaston did not dance again with Vera that night, and he did dance several times with Mrs. Romer; it did not escape her notice, however, that he seemed absent and abstracted, and that his face bore its hardest and sternest aspect throughout the remainder of the evening.
So the ball at Shadonake came to an end, as balls do, with the first gleams of daylight; and nothing was left of all the gay crowd who had so lately filled the brilliant rooms but several sleepy people creeping up slowly to bed, and a great chiffonade of tattered laces, and flowers, and coloured scraps littered all over the polished floor of the ball-room.
CHAPTER XIV.
HER WEDDING DRESS.
Those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings,
Blank misgivings—
High instincts before which our moral nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.
Wordsworth.
"Vera, are you not coming to look at it?"