“People are very kindly after all,” she said to herself. “I think I have been growing morbid lately. It must be all my fancy that Trevor is changed. I don’t believe he is. One grows exacting with living so much alone.”
The thought cheered her. She looked brighter and less wearied when Mr. Fawcett came to claim her.
“What has become of Geneviève?” she exclaimed, looking round, as she took Trevor’s arm. “She was standing beside Miss Winter a moment ago.”
Trevor laughed. “You must have been asleep, my dear child,” he said. “Did you not see me introduce Dangerfield to her? There they are. They are to be our vis-à-vis. I told Dangerfield she couldn’t speak English at all, and he doesn’t know a syllable of anything else. It will be great fun watching them.”
Cicely looked uneasy. “I am afraid Geneviève may not quite like it,” she said rather timidly; “I don’t think she understands jokes, Trevor. I wish you would tell Mr. Dangerfield that she can speak English perfectly, for if he begins trying French she would think it would be rude to speak English.”
“Nonsense,” said Trevor rather brusquely; “nonsense. Geneviève understands a joke as well as any one. You don’t understand her Cicely, as I have often told you. She knows all about it, and you will see how she will take off Dangerfield.”
Cicely said no more, but already the little gleam of sunshine seemed clouded over. She went through the quadrille languidly and silently. Mr. Fawcett indeed seemed to have no leisure for talking to his partner; his whole attention was absorbed by watching the way in which his pretty vis-à-vis befooled her partner.
Now and then he turned to Cicely. “Do look at Dangerfield,” he would say; “he has been five minutes over one word. Did you ever see anything so mischievous as the way Geneviève looks up at him in bewilderment?”
Cicely smiled faintly. “I did not know she could act so well,” she said. Then she regretted the words and would have said something to soften them, but Trevor did not seem to have caught their meaning. He was in exuberant spirits, almost excitedly gay and jocular, yet to Cicely it seemed that there was something forced in his manner, and when he gave her his arm again after the quadrille was over she fancied he was eager to avoid a téte-à-tête.
“I am afraid I must leave you here, Cicely,” he said, when he had found a comfortable sofa in one of the drawing-rooms,“I have such a terrible amount of introducing and all that to do between the dances.”