“Mrs Marrinder! What a godsend!” he exclaimed.
He did not see Miss Fforde’s face as he left her, and, had he done so, it would have taken far more than his very average modicum of discernment to have rightly interpreted the varying and curiously intermingling expressions which rapidly crossed it, like cloud shadows alternating with dashes of sunshine on an April morning. She stood for a moment or two where she was, then glancing round and seeing a vacant seat in a corner she quietly appropriated it.
“The tenth waltz,” she repeated to herself with the ghost of a smile. “I wonder—” but that was all.
The evening wore on. Miss Fforde had danced once—but only once. It was with a man whom her host himself introduced to her, and, though good-natured and unaffected, he was boyish and commonplace; and she had to put some force on herself to reply with any show of interest to his attempts at conversation. She was engaged for one or two other dances, but it was hot, and the rooms were crowded, and with a scarcely acknowledged reflection—for Miss Fforde was young and inexperienced enough to think it hardly fair to make an engagement even for but a dance, to break it deliberately—that if her partners did not find her it would not much matter, the girl withdrew quietly into a corner, where a friendly curtain all but screened her from observation, and allowed her to enjoy in peace the dangerous but delightful refreshment of an open window hard by.
The draught betrayed its source, however. She was scarcely seated when voices approaching caught her ears.
“Here you are—there must be a window open, it is ever so much cooler in this corner. Are you afraid of the draught?” said a voice she thought she recognised.
“No-o—at least—oh, this corner will do beautifully. The curtain will protect me. What a blessing to get a little air!” replied a second speaker—a lady evidently.
“People have no business to cram their rooms so. And these rooms are—well, not spacious. How in the world did you get Marrinder to come?”
The second speaker laughed. “It was quite the other way,” she replied. “How did he get me to come? you might ask. He has something or other to do with our host, and made a personal matter of my coming, so, of course, I gave in.”
“How angelic!”