Thus thought Mary when she again found herself in her corner by Mrs Greville. Her dances, so far as she knew, were over for the evening, but Lilias had not yet returned to her chaperon’s wing. Mrs Greville was beginning to wonder what o’clock it was.
“Not that I am in the least tired,” she said. “As long as Lilias is enjoying herself I am quite pleased to stay, and you, too, my dear. Are you not going to dance any more?”
“I think not,” Mary was replying when a voice behind her made her start.
“Miss Western,” it said, “if you are not engaged for this dance, may I have the honour of it?”
The voice was not altogether unfamiliar, when had she heard it before? It was not an unpleasing voice, though its tone was cold and very formal. Mary looked up; there, before her, stood Mr Cheviott.
In utter amazement, Mary partially lost her head. She rose mechanically, and, murmuring something in the shape of an assent, took Mr Cheviott’s arm, and had passed some little way down the room before she quite realised what she was doing. Then it all flashed upon her; the extreme oddness of the whole proceeding, and she grew confused and uneasy in trying to think how otherwise she should have done. Mr Cheviott had never been introduced to her! Those two or three words in the church porch two months ago were all that had ever passed between them. Yet his manner had been perfectly, even formally respectful, and the glow of indignation that had mounted to Mary’s cheeks at the mere notion of anything but respect being shown to her father’s daughter, faded as quickly away. One glance at Mr Cheviott’s grave, preoccupied face was enough completely to dispel it, and she, thereupon, solved the enigma in another manner. It was all on Lilias’s account! Mr Cheviott, doubtless in his cousin’s confidence, wished, naturally enough, to know something of her relations, and had, with almost unconscious disregard of conventionality, chosen this way of making friends. On second thoughts, Mary quite decided that she liked him all the better for it, and congratulated herself that her instincts had been in the right, that she had not, with misplaced prudery, chilled and repelled his first overtures of kindliness and interest.
It was a round dance, but Mr Cheviott marched on down the room as if perfectly oblivious that dancing of any kind was in question. Suddenly he stopped.
“Do you like balls?” he asked, abruptly.
“I don’t dislike them,” answered Mary, quietly.
Mr Cheviott, in spite of himself, smiled, and Mary, looking up, was again struck, as she had been the first time she saw him, by the effect of a smile on his somewhat sombre countenance.