There was dancing in two rooms; during Ella’s next dance, a waltz with Major Frost, the elder Misses St Quentin were in the other room. The next, which she danced with Mr Littleton, was a square, and though she once caught sight of Madelene’s head through a doorway, they did not come more nearly together! which Ella, still more than half afraid of being seen by her sisters, was not sorry for.
“It must come, sooner or later,” she thought; “but I should like to be beside my godmother when they first see me.”
Chapter Ten.
An Old-World Shoe.
“Our dance, I think, Miss St Quentin,” said Major Frost, when, after searching some time for Madelene, he discovered her at last in the tea-room. “The second polka it is,” and as Madelene acquiesced, “I have been dancing with such a wonderfully pretty little creature,” he went on, “a Miss Wyndham, or Winton, I am not quite sure of the name. A perfect stranger, staying at some house in the neighbourhood they say. I must point her out to you.”
“I wonder who she can be?” Miss St Quentin replied. “Mrs Belvoir did not know of any particularly pretty girl coming—no stranger, I mean.”
“But she is a very particularly pretty girl; I know you will agree with me. If you don’t mind we’ll go into the other room and I will point her out to you. She is dancing with Cheynes, I think.”
Madelene felt but mildly interested in the object of her partner’s enthusiasm, but she made no difficulty. The second room was very crowded.