“It would be but paying you back,” said the Doctor, bowing. “Miss Macintosh has been swinging us a’ aff our feet since she entered the room.”
She laughed behind her clouded glasses, tapped him lightly with her fan, and swam into the opening movement of the figure. The word’s abused, yet I can but say she danced divinely, with such grace, lightness of foot, and rhythm of the body that folk stared at her in admiration and incredulity: her carriage, seen from behind, came perilously near betraying her, and possibly her partner might have soon discovered who he had, even if she had not made him a confession.
“Upon my word!” said he, in a pause between the figures,—“Upon my word! you dance magnificently, Miss Macintosh. I must apologise for such a stiff old partner as you’ve gotten.”
“I micht weel dance,” said she. “You ken I’m a dancin’-mistress?” Then she whispered hurriedly in her natural voice to him. “I feel real bold, Dr Brash, to be dancing with you here when I haven’t come out yet, and I feel real mean to be deceiving you, who would dance with an old frump just because you’re sorry for her, and I can’t do it one minute longer. Don’t you know me, really?”
“Good Lord!” said he in an undertone, aghast. “Miss Lennox!”
“Only for you,” she whispered. “Please don’t tell anybody else.”
“You beat all,” he told her. “I suppose I’m making myself ridiculous dancing away here with—h’m!—auld langsyne, but faith I have the advantage now of the others, and you mustn’t let on when the thing comes out that I did not know you from the outset. I have a crow to pick with Miss Ailie about this—the rogue! But, young woman, it’s an actress you are!”
“Not yet, but it’s an actress I mean to be,” she said, pousetting with him.
“H’m!” said he, “there seems the natural gift for it, but once on a time I made up my mind it was to be poetry.”
“I’ve got over poetry,” she said. “I found I was only one of that kind of poets who always cut it up in fourteen-line lengths and begin with ‘As when.’ No, it’s to be the stage, Dr Brash; I guess God’s fixed it.”