“Oh,—no; I am quite ready. I was engaged for this dance—the tenth, isn’t it? But I am tired, and it doesn’t matter. My partner, whoever he was, can find some one else. Good-night, Mr Norreys.”
“Let me go with you to the door at least,” he replied. “I’ll look about for that girl in black on my way, so that if I don’t see her I can honestly feel I have done my duty.”
Then there came a flutter and rustling, and Miss Fforde knew that her neighbours had taken their departure.
She waited an instant, and then came out of her corner.
“He is not likely to come back to look for me in this room,” she thought; “but in case he possibly should, I—I shall not hide myself.”
She had had a moment’s sharp conflict with herself before arriving at this decision; and her usually pale face was still faintly flushed when, slowly making his way in the direction of the sofa where she had now conspicuously placed herself, she descried Mr Norreys.
“Our dance—the tenth—I believe,” he said, with an exaggeration of indifference, sounding almost as if he wished to irritate her into making some excuse to escape.
In her place nine girls out of ten would have done so, and without troubling themselves to hide their indignation. But Maisie Fforde was not one of those nine. She rose quietly from her seat and took his arm.
“Yes,” she said, “it is our dance.”
Something in her voice, or tone, made him glance at her with a shade more attention than he had hitherto condescended to bestow on “Mrs Englewood’s protégée” She was looking straight before her; her features, which he now discovered to be delicate in outline, and almost faultlessly regular in their proportions, wore an expression of perfect composure; only the slight, very slight, rose-flush on her cheeks would have told to one who knew her well of some inward excitement.