"What time have you had to give me?" said Fairlie, coldly. "You have been surrounded all the evening."
"Of course I have. I am not so disagreeable to other gentlemen as I am to you. But I could have made time for you if you had only asked for it. At your own ball last week you engaged me beforehand for six waltzes."
Fairlie relented towards her. Despite her flirting, he thought she did not care for Belle after all.
"Well," he said, smiling, "will you give me one after supper?"
"You told me you shouldn't dance, Colonel Fairlie," said Katherine Vane, smiling.
"One can't tell what one mayn't do under temptation," said Fairlie, smiling too. "A man may change his mind, you know."
"Oh yes," cried Geraldine; "a man may change his mind, and we are expected to be eminently grateful to him for his condescension; but if we change our minds, how severely we are condemned for vacillation: 'So weak!' 'Just like women!' 'Never like the same thing two minutes, poor things!'"
"You don't like the same thing two minutes, Geraldine," laughed Fairlie; "so I dare say you speak feelingly."
"I changeable! I am constancy itself!"
"Are you? You know what the Italians say of 'ocche azzure'?"