Mr. Ledbury waits to be asked about “Mariana” and “Locksley Hall.” No inquiry, so he “rubs up an idea upon another tack”:
“Mr. L. ‘What do you think of our vis-à-vis?’
“Miss H. ‘Which one?’
“Mr. L. ‘The lady with that strange head-dress. Do you know her?’
“Miss H. ‘It is Miss Brown—my cousin.’”
Mr. Ledbury wishes he could fall through a trap in the floor.
The quadrille continues, with occasional attempts on the part of the brilliant couple to make conversation. The acme of imbecility seems to be reached when the lady asks if Mr. L. plays any instrument? He replies that he plays the flute a little. Does she admire it?
“Oh, so very much!” she says.
A waltz is proposed, but that form of dancing is, says our author, “never established without a prolonged desire on the part of everybody to relinquish the honour of commencing it. At last the example is set by one daring pair, timidly followed by another couple, and then by another, who get out of step at the end of the first round, and after treading severely upon the advanced toes of the old lady in a very flowery cap and plum-coloured satin (one of our faded wallflowers), who is sitting out at the top of the room, and who from that instant deprecates waltzing as an amusement not at all consistent with her ideas of feminine decorum.”