I was busy with these reflections as we drove through the streets of the city towards the Hartmann's residence, and I alighted at their door with my eyes full of unshed tears. How strangely at odds we can be with the circumstances of our daily lives.
Very soon, however, I was obliged to dispel all such personal and intimate ruminations. I was no longer my own property to dispose of as I willed. I was standing in the doorway of the spacious ball-room with a circle of new-made gentlemen acquaintances around me; my father and his wife stood a short distance from me and watched the proceedings without looking at them.
"May I have the fifth Miss Hampden," the very good-looking Mr. Haliburton was asking with a smile.
"What is the dance?" I interrupted as he was about to scribble his initials.
"A polka," he replied with sweet urbanity. I shook my head negatively and tried to look pleasantly sorry. He raised his perfect dark eye-brows in thorough astonishment and put in an exclamatory "Why?"
"No fast dances," I said in a seriously playful tone, "I will give you the sixth, it is a lancers."
"Oh, this is too bad," he argued earnestly, "however," he continued with his peculiar, winning smile, "I am thankful for any." He wrote his name very badly on my programme, and mine on his, then with a most graceful bow made way for a new petitioner.
I had nearly the same little dialogue with each hero that addressed me, and as there were but four slow dances on the programme for the evening, I was soon in a trying dilemma. Amiable and courteous as these fashionable lions were acknowledged to be, they could not get themselves to sacrifice the pleasure, great or small, which they found in a waltz or polka, to sit the dance out quietly with a girl of scruples and principles.
I had to be satisfied, therefore, with the conviction that I was doomed to spend the greater part of the evening alone; and what was more consoling still, this being my first appearance at a ball, I was sure to be closely watched by many a fair rival. Already the music for the opening dance was sounding. I was engaged for this one, and had for my vis-a-vis my step-mother and an imposing gentleman in heavy regimentals. My partner was an ordinary man of the period, of medium height, with common-place moustache and neatly trimmed side-whiskers, who made several differently worded remarks of the same meaning upon the same subject.
I was disposed not to enjoy this evening for many reasons, and I was conscious of going through the figures of the dance automatically and tastelessly. I came back after each lady's chain to my tiresome partner, wishing earnestly that it would soon be over. My step-mother detected my listless manner, and came to me later, when the dance was ended and I had been left by the amiable Mr. Fawcett standing before a picture of Siddons which I was ostensibly admiring with enthusiasm. There was a becoming smile on the lace of my step-mother, as there always was in fashionable company, but there was no sweetness in the anger which was interpreted by the quick, impatient words that flashed from behind the glittering plumes of her splendid fan into my ear: