Another turn brought them against Mr. Flaxman and his partner. Mr. Flaxman came at once to greet her with smiling courtesy.
'I have a Cambridge friend to introduce to you—a beautiful youth. Shall I find you by Helen? Now, Lady Florence, patience a moment. That corner is too crowded. How good that last turn was!'
And bending with a sort of kind chivalry over his partner, who looked at him with the eyes of a joyous excited child, he led her away. Five minutes later Rose, standing flushed by Lady Helen, saw him coming again towards her, ushering a tall blue-eyed youth, whom he introduced to her as 'Lord Waynflete.' The handsome boy looked at her with a boy's open admiration, and beguiled her of a supper dance, while a group standing near, a mother and three daughters, stood watching with cold eyes and expressions which said plainly to the initiated that mere beauty was receiving a ridiculous amount of attention.
'I wouldn't have given it him, but it is rude—it is bad manners, not even to ask!' the supposed victress was saying to herself, with quivering lips, her eyes following not the Trinity freshman, who was their latest captive, but an older man's well-knit figure, and a head on which the fair hair was already growing scantily, receding a little from the fine intellectual brows.
An hour later she was again standing by Lady Helen, waiting for a partner, when she saw two persons crossing the room, which was just beginning to fill again for dancing, towards them. One was Mr. Flaxman, the other was a small wrinkled old man, who leant upon his arm, displaying the ribbon of the Garter as he walked.
'Dear me,' said Lady Helen, a little fluttered, 'here is my uncle Sedbergh. I thought they had left town.'
The pair approached, and the old Duke bowed over his niece's hand with the manners of a past generation.
'I made Hugh give me an arm,' he said quaveringly. 'These floors are homicidal. If I come down on them I shall bring an action.'
'I thought you had all left town?' said Lady Helen.
'Who can make plans with a Government in power pledged to every sort of villainy and public plunder?' said the old man testily. 'I suppose Varley's there to-night, helping to vote away my property and Fauntleroy's.'