“Are you tired, Cicely?” inquired Geneviève somewhat awkwardly.
There was no time for a reply. Up came Lady Frederica, with a gentleman to be introduced to Miss Casalis in humble hope of finding she had still a dance to spare, in which he was not disappointed. This happy person was followed by another and yet another, till the vacant spaces on Geneviève’s card grow few. Then the music begins again. Cicely catches a glimpse of Trevor’s tall figure in the doorway; another moment, and Geneviève disappears on his arm.
“Only the second dance—will the evening never be over?” thought Cicely.
“Are you not dancing, my dear?” said Lady Frederica, coming up to her.
“I don’t know, at least I forget. I think I am engaged for this dance,” replied the girl indifferently. “Oh! yes,” consulting her card, “I am engaged to Sir Arthur Vauxley; but he has not come for me. I don’t care. I would rather not dance. Don’t you think it is rather cold, Lady Frederica?”
“Cold, my dear!” repeated her hostess in astonishment, fanning herself with a nearer approach to vigour than she was often in the habit of exerting; “cold! Why we are in the greatest alarm that the heat will be insufferable before supper; we cannot get all the windows open till then. Cold! You must have got a chill.”
“Perhaps I have,” said Cicely, shivering a little and drawing back further into her corner.
But she was not long allowed to remain there. Sir Arthur found her out and claimed his dance. Then followed others, for which she was likewise engaged; the evening began to pass a little more quickly than at first; two dances more, and there would come her second one with Trevor—a waltz this time. Cicely’s eyes brightened and a little colour stole into her checks when at last the intervening dances were over and the waltz music began.
“The ‘Zuleika,’” she said to herself, “that is one of Trevor’s favourites. I wish he would come!”
Her feet beat time to the familiar strains, her eyes turned impatiently towards the doorway in search of the pleasant, fair face of her betrothed—again and again, but in vain. Cicely was only twenty after all; she could not but own to herself that it was disappointing.