"I do not dance," she said, but in a manner which did not seem to refuse conversation. The stranger appeared very well satisfied with the compromise; and some pleasant allusion to the different nature of the scene in which they last met, put them at once upon an easy footing.
"You say you do not dance—that is, of course, you will not. I shall not believe," he continued, "even if you had just stepped from your high tower of wisdom, but that you can do any thing you please to do. Pardon so blunt a speech."
"Oh, I can, I think," she replied. "My uncle, I believe, would have taught me the broad-sword exercise, if any one had suggested its utility to him."
And saying this, she turned to her uncle, to give him an opportunity, if he pleased, of joining the conversation. It was an opportunity which Mr Bloomfield, who had heard a foreign language chattered in his ear all the evening, would have gladly taken; but the patience of that gentleman had been for some time nearly exhausted; he had taken his sister under his arm, and was just going to propose to Mildred to leave the room.
The stranger escorted them through the crowd, and saw the ladies into their carriage.
"Can we set you down any where?" said Mr Bloomfield, who, though impatient to be gone, was disposed to be very cordial towards his fellow-countryman. "We are at the Hotel de l'Europe."
"And I opposite at the Hotel de Flandres—I will willingly accept your offer;" and he took the vacant seat in their carriage.
"How do you like Brussels?" was on the lips of both gentlemen at the same time.
"Nay," said the younger, "I have been here, I think, the longest; the question is mine by right of priority of residence."
Mr Bloomfield was nothing loath to communicate his impression of all that he had seen, and especially to dilate upon a grievance which, it seemed, had sorely afflicted him.