When she was rid of me, making no concealment of her disappointment and impatience, I looked for Elsin, but found Rosamund Barry, and led her out in one of those animated figures we had learned at home from the Frenchman, Grasset—dances that suited her, the rose coquette!—gay dances, where the petticoat reveals a pretty limb discreetly; where fans play, opening and closing like the painted wings of butterflies alarmed; where fingers touch, fall away, interlace and unlace; where a light waist-clasp and a vis-à-vis leaves a moment for a whisper and its answer, promise, assent, or low refusal as partners part, dropping away in low, slow reverence, which ends the frivolous figure with regretful decorum.
Askance I had seen Elsin and O'Neil, a graceful pair of figures in the frolic, and now I sought her, leaving Rosamund to Sir Henry, but that villain O'Neil had her to wine, and amid all that thirsty throng and noise of laughter I missed her in the tumult, and then lost her for two hours. I must admit those two hours sped with the gay partners that fortune sent me—and one there was whose fingers were shyly eloquent, a black-eyed beauty from Westchester, with a fresh savor of free winds and grassy hillsides clinging to her, and a certain lovely awkwardness which claims an arm to steady very often. Lord! I had her twice to ices and to wine, and we laughed and laughed at nothing, and might have been merrier, but her mother seized her with scant ceremony, and a strange young gentleman breathed hard and glared at me as I recovered dignity, which made me mad enough to follow him half across the hall ere I reflected that my business here permitted me no quarrel of my own seeking.
Robbed of my Westchester shepherdess, swallowing my disgust, I sauntered forward, finding Elsin Grey with Lady Coleville, seated together by the wall. What they had been whispering there together I knew not, but I pushed through the attendant circle of beaus and gallants who were waiting there their turns, and presented myself before them.
"I am danced to rags and ribbons, Carus," said Elsin Grey—"and no thanks to you for the pleasure, you who begged me for a dance or two; and I offered twenty, silly that I was to so invite affront!"
She was smiling when she spoke, but Lady Coleville's white teeth were in her fan's edge, and she looked at me with eyes made bright through disappointment.
"You are conducting like a silly boy," she said, "with those hoydens from Westchester, and every little baggage that dimples at your stare. Lord! Carus, I thought you grown to manhood!"
"Is there a harm in dancing at a ball, madam?" I asked, laughing.
"Fie! You are deceitful, too. Elsin, be chary of your favors. Dance with any man but him. He'll be wearing two watches to-morrow, and his hair piled up like a floating island!"
She smiled, but her eyes were not overgay. And presently she turned on Elsin with a grave shake of her head:
"You disappoint me, both of you," she said. "Elsin, I never dreamed that you——"