I danced the first dance with her, after the play was over—(I forgot to tell you we were very much applauded)—and Tom Cleaveland engaging her for the next, I proposed a walk through the conservatories to a sentimental young lady who was my peculiar aversion, but to whom I became extremely dévoué, for I thought I would try and pique Mary if I could.
The light strains of dance music floated in from the distance, and the air was laden with the scent of flowers, and many a tête-à-tête and partie carrée was arranged in that commodious conservatory.
Half hidden by an orange-tree, Florence Aspeden was leaning back in a garden-chair, close to where we stood looking out upon the beautiful night. Her fair face was flushed, and she was nervously picking some of the blossoms to pieces; before her stood Mounteagle, speaking eagerly. I was moving away to avoid being a hearer of his love-speech, as I doubted not it was, but my companion, with many young-ladyish expressions of adoration of the "sublime moonlight," begged me to stay "one moment, that she might see the dear moon emerge like a swan from that dark, beautiful cloud!" and in the pauses of her ecstatics I heard poor Mount's voice in a tone of intense entreaty.
At that moment Fane passed. He glanced at the group behind the orange-trees, and his face grew stern and cold, and his lips closed with that iron compression they always have when he is irritated. His eyes met Florences, and he bowed haughtily and stiffly as he moved on, and his upright figure, with its stately head, was seen in the room beyond, high above any of those around him. A heavy sigh came through the orange boughs, and her voice whispered, "I—I am very sorry, but——"
"Oh! do look at the moonbeams falling on that darling little piece of water, Mr. Wilmot!" exclaimed my decidedly moonstruck companion.
"Is there no hope?" cried poor Mount.
"None!" And the low-whispered knell of hope came sighing over the flowers. I thought how little she guessed there was none for her. Poor Florence!
"Oh, this night! I could gaze on it forever, though it is saddening in its sweetness, do not you think?" asked my romantic demoiselle. "Ah! what a pretty valse they are playing!"
"May I have the pleasure of dancing it with you?" I felt myself obliged to ask, although intensely victimized thereby, as I hate dancing, and wonder whatever idiot invented it.
Miss Chesney, considering her devotion to the moon, consented very joyfully to leave it for the pleasures (?) of a valse à deux temps.