Mr. Blase was quite impervious to the words. They had parted now: Frank was swinging on again; Rosaline was coming this way. Blase went strolling across the street to meet her: but she, as if purposely to avoid him, suddenly turned down an opening between the houses, and was lost to sight and to Blase Pellet.
"I wonder if she cut down there to avoid me?" thought he, standing still in mortification. And there was a very angry look on his face as he crossed back again from his fruitless errand.
Daisy was not alone in the drawing-room this evening when Frank arrived. Whether his gossip with Rosaline had been too prolonged, or whether he had not walked as quickly as usual, it was a minute past seven when Frank reached The Mount. All the ladies were assembled: Lydia and Daisy in blue silk; Mrs. St. Clare in black satin. Their kinsman had been dead six months, and the young ladies had just gone out of mourning for him; but Mrs. St. Clare wore hers still.
Daisy looked radiant; at any rate, in Frank's eyes: a very fairy. The white lace on her low body and sleeves was scarcely whiter than her fair neck and arms: one white rose nestled in her hair.
"Dinner is served, madam."
Frank offered his arm to Mrs. St. Clare: the two young ladies followed. It was a large and very handsome dining-room: the table, with its white cloth, and its glass and silver glittering under the wax-lights, looked almost lost in it. Lydia faced her mother; Frank and Daisy were opposite each other. He looked well in evening dress: worthy of being a prince, thought Daisy.
The conversation turned chiefly on the festivities of the following evening. Mrs. St. Clare was to give a dance in honour of her youngest daughter's birthday. It would not be a large party; the neighbourhood did not afford that; but some guests from a distance were to sleep in the house, and remain for a day or two.
"Will you give me the first dance, Daisy?" Frank seized an opportunity of whispering to her, as they were all returning to the drawing-room together.
Daisy shook her head, and blushed again. Blushed at the familiar word, which he had not presumed to use until that day. But it had never sounded so sweet to her from other lips.
"I may not," she answered. "Mamma has decided that my first dance must be with some old guy of a Cornish baronet—Sir Paul Trellasis. Going, do you say! Why? It is not yet nine o'clock.