The other men fell away as she took my arm. Don Pedro stepped forward as though to interpose, but desisted at a sign from Doña Marguerite. I entered the ballroom with colors flying and the loveliest girl in all the world upon my arm. For the moment Fortune was with me. The Spanish dance had reached an end, and the musicians were striking up a waltz. Nothing could have suited me better. Dancing was one of my few accomplishments, and it was the very poetry of love and life to circle about the long room with my darling in my arms, in rhythm to the pulsing throb of the sweetest and softest of music.
It was no more than human that my bliss should key yet higher with a tang of triumph as I glided with my lovely partner under the nose of the scowling Salcedo and past the lowering visage of his Andalusian aide. It might be that I was to meet my death from one or the other of them, but for the time at least I was the happiest man beneath heaven. I was in Paradise.
Before I was forced to relinquish her to Doña Marguerite at the stopping of the music, I received my dear girl's pledge to give me all the waltzes of the evening. More she dared not promise for fear of the interference of her aunt. As may be imagined, it was a severe trial to see her led out by another partner, even though she accepted Pike instead of Medina for the voluptuous fandango and though Doña Dolores contrived to pilot me into the set in which my lady danced the minuet as partner to His Excellency, Don Nimesio.
Before the close of the baile, Medina's persistence and his open warning off of the other officers won him two dances, strive as my lady would to avoid him. But even he lacked the assurance to interfere with Salcedo's marked attentions, and, for the rest, Pike, Malgares, and myself contrived to foil him in every attempt, with the two exceptions mentioned. For myself, I had the divine joy of dancing every waltz with my lady, and it did not lessen my rapture that Medina followed us each time with a gaze which would have struck me dead had it possessed the power.
Such bliss could not last. All too soon the ball began to draw to a close, and when I came to lead out Alisanda for the last waltz, Doña Marguerite interposed with the statement that they were about to leave. Making the best of the situation, I claimed and was granted the privilege of escorting my darling to the coach. Such complaisance on the part of her duenna astonished me. I could account for it only on the supposition that Señora Vallois thought to spur on Salcedo's ardor and jealousy by the sight of a favored suitor.
However that may have been, the last of my successes of the evening still farther infuriated the truculent Medina. It is not improbable he would have challenged me that night had not my failure to obtain a word apart with Alisanda induced me to follow the Vallois coach all the way across the city.
Watching from the corner of the plaza, I saw the coach roll in between the wide-flung gates of the Vallois mansion. I waited perhaps half an hour, then stole silently up the street to my black doorway, across from her balcony, and began to murmur the song which had twice brought me a response from her. Almost immediately a light appeared behind the drawn hangings. I started forward eagerly, only to check myself and step back into the denser darkness of my lurking place. A hand had parted the curtains, and between them appeared the frowning face of Don Pedro.
I went home, if not in as black a mood as Medina, at least not disposed to kindly thoughts toward my enemies.