“She looked round at me, and in the turn of her head and the flash of the rings I seemed to see Concha of the gipsy booth.
“‘Father doesn’t hold with dancing,’ she replied.
“‘He isn’t here to see,’ I said. ‘Won’t you try a step?’
“She blushed. It was a pretty sight to see her blush.
“‘I don’t know how,’ she said awkwardly, looking away from me into the glass as she wound the scarf round her neck.
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘will you learn if I have you taught?’
“She burst into the shrill laugh of the common girl, and cried, ‘Get along with you, Mr. Malory! making fun of a poor girl like me.’
“Concha was gone, but I struggled to revive her, without conviction, and with a queer blankness in my heart. At least,” said Malory, correcting himself, “it wasn’t my heart, but my mind, my sense of rightness, that was disappointed.
“‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘I’ll have you taught the dances of Spain.’
“‘Spain?’ she echoed, with a frown genuinely puzzled, so remote from her was all thought of the land of her wandering forefathers.