Set in Silver
but presently I saw him waltzing with Lady Knaresbrook; and he danced
beautifully, as if he'd done nothing else all those years in Bengal.
Then I said to myself: "He's vexed with me because he thinks I behaved
badly at dinner, and perhaps I did." And I almost hoped he would suggest
sitting out a dance, so that we could talk.
But then Dick came; and when he found I had two dances he wanted them
both. "There are things I must tell you," he said. And mother, it's easy
to see that the creature has some talent as a detective, because he
guessed at once why I'd been saving those dances.
"It's no good keeping anything up your sleeve for Pendragon," said he,
in his perky way, as if he were on an equality with the
ex-Lieutenant-Governor of East Bengal. "He won't ask you to dance. He
thinks you're a little girl, and is leaving you to little boys, like me,
which is quite right. The only woman he's ever taken any interest in for
the last fifteen years is Aunt Gwen. And you can't say he doesn't show
good taste."
I couldn't, especially as Mrs. Senter was looking like the heroine of a
novel which you'd be sure to forbid my reading; so I gave him the
dances, partly for that reason and partly because I was cowardly enough
to want to hear what he had to tell. Just at the moment he couldn't say
more, though, because a sweet brown lamb of a middy came and whirled me
away. So it went on for half the evening, until it was nearly time for
Dick Burden's first dance, and I was sitting down to breathe (after a
furious galop, which didn't go at all well with a Directoire dress),
beside Mrs. Norton, who had the air of thinking a ballroom a sort of
pound for lost souls.
Up came Sir Lionel as if to speak to her, and--I don't know what made me
do it--I said, "I saved a dance for you, but you never asked me for it,
so I gave it to someone else."
His face got red. Perhaps he thought I was lecturing him for being rude.
"Did you give it to Starlin?" he asked, bluntly.
"No. I've had mine with Captain Starlin. To Mr. Burden," said I.
"Do you want to dance it with him?"
"Not at all."
"Chuck him, then, and dance it with me. I should like to talk to you."
"That's what he said."
"Do you want to hear what he's got to say?"
(Well, you know, dear, I _had_ wanted to; but suddenly I felt as if Dick
didn't matter more than a fly, nor did any one else except the person I
was talking to. You _do_ feel like that with these quiet, masterful sort
of people, whether you care for them or not. It's just a kind of
momentary hypnotism; or, at least, that's the definition I've been
giving myself.)
"I don't want to hear what he's got to say," my hypnotized Me answered,
in the queer, abrupt way in which we had begun snapping out little short
sentences to each other. "I'm sure he couldn't say anything really
interesting."
"Don't you like Dick Burden?"
"Not much."
"Then the dance is mine. Which is it?"
"The next. Here he comes now. I see the top of his head, over the
shoulder of that youth with the collar of a curate and the face of a
convict."
The Dragon smiled benevolently at my wicked description of a
comparatively inoffensive person, and whisked me off.
"Are you offended with me?" I asked, as we waltzed a weird but heavenly
Hungarian waltz (made in Germany).
"Why do you ask that?" he wanted to know.
"Because you looked offended at dinner. What had I done? Eaten something
with the wrong fork?"
"You had done nothing I oughtn't to have been prepared to see you do."
"What ought you to be prepared to see me do?"
"It doesn't matter now."
"It does. If you don't tell me, I shall scream 'Murder' at the top of my
lungs, and then you'll have to speak."
"I certainly wouldn't. I'd bundle you home at once."
"I haven't got any home."
"My home is yours, till you marry."
"Or you do."
"Don't talk nonsense." (He was probably going to say "Tommy-rot" but
considered such striking words unfit for the ear of a debutante. This
_was_ my debut, I suppose? My very first ball.)
"Then tell me what you were unprepared for in me."
"I was prepared for it at first, before I saw you. But----"
"What?"
"Well, if you will have it, for your flirting."
Suddenly I felt impish, and said, innocently, that I supposed it was
what girls came on board men-o'-war to do, so I had only done my best to
please. By this time we'd stopped dancing, and were sitting down. I'd
forgotten Dick Burden.
"It all depends upon the point of view," he answered, with rather a
disgusted air.
"My point of view is," said I, gravely, "that soldiers as _well_ as
sailors should approve of flirting, because flirtation is a warlike act;
a short incursion into the enemy's country, with the full intention of
getting back untouched."
"Ah, but what of the enemy?" suggested the Dragon.
"He can always take care of himself on such incursions."
"So that's the theory? And at nineteen you have enlisted in that army?"
"What army?"
"The great army of flirts."
I couldn't keep it up any longer, for I had really started in to
explain, not to joke. And you know, dear, that flirting as a profession
wouldn't be in my line at all.
"Do I look like a flirt?" I asked.
"No. You don't," said he. "And I was beginning to hope----"
"Please go on hoping, then," I said. "Because I didn't want to behave
badly. If I did, it was because I don't quite know the game yet. And I
wanted to tell you that I didn't really mean to be silly and
schoolgirlish, and disgrace you and Mrs. Norton."
Then it was his turn to apologize, and he did it thoroughly. He said
that I hadn't been silly, and so far from disgracing him, he was proud
of me--"proud of his ward." It was only that I seemed so much more
womanly and companionable than he'd expected, that he couldn't bear to
see in me, or think he saw, any likeness whatever to inferior types of
woman. Whereupon I had the impertinence to ask _why_ he'd expected me to
be inferior; but the only explanation I could get him to make was that
he didn't know much about girls. Which he had remarked before.
We'd sat out two dances before we--I mean I--knew it; and nobody had
dared to come near us, because a middy can't very well snatch a partner
out of a celebrity's pocket. And Dick, too, though he seems to have the
courage of most of his convictions, drew the line at that. But suddenly
I did remember. I smiled at a hovering laddie with the most smoothly
polished hair you ever saw, just like a black helmet; and when the
laddie had swung me away in the Merry Widow waltz Sir Lionel went back
to Mrs. Senter. Rather an appropriate air for her to dance to, I
thought. I do pray I'm not getting kitten-catty? Anyhow, I'm not in my
_second_ kittenhood!
You will be wondering by this time why I'm sorry we stayed at Southsea,
when it was all for me, and I seem to have been having the "time of my
life." But I'm coming to the part you want to know about.
I thought perhaps Dick Burden would be vexed at my going off with Sir
Lionel, under his nose, just as he was ready to say "my dance." However,
he walked up to me as if nothing had happened, when it was time for the
second, so I didn't apologize. I thought it best to let sleeping
partners lie.
We danced a little, but Dick, who is one-and-twenty, doesn't waltz half
as well as Sir Lionel, who is forty; and he saw that I thought so.
Presently he asked if I'd rather sit out the rest, and I answered, yes;
so he said he would tell me the things he had to say. He found a quiet
place, which must have looked as if deliberately selected for a
desperate flirtation; and then he didn't do much beating about the bush.
He just told me that he _knew everything_. He'd partly "detected" it,
and partly found out by chance; but of course he made the most of the
detecting bit.
Don't be frightened and get a palpitation at the news, dearest; it isn't
worth it. There's going to be no flare-up. Of course, if I were the
heroine of a really nice melodrama, in such a scene as Dick and I went
through, I should have been accompanied by slow music, with lime-light
every time I turned my head, which would have heartened me up very much;
while Dick would have had villain music--plink, plink, plunk! But I did
as well as I could without an accompaniment, and I think, on the whole,
managed the business very well.
You see, I had to think of Ellaline. I dared not let her out of my mind
for a single instant, for if I should fail her now, at the crucial time,
it would be my fault if her love story burst and went up the spout. If
I'd stopped thinking of her, and saying in my mind while Dick talked, "I
must save Ellaline, no matter what happens to me!" I should certainly
have boxed his ears and told him to go to limbo.
He began by telling me that he'd met a friend of mine, a Miss
Bennett--Kathy Bennett. Oh, mother, just for a minute my heart beat
under my pretty frock like a bird caught in a child's hand! You remember
my writing you what a friendship Ellaline and Kathy struck up, before
Kathy left school to go back to England, and how she sent Ellaline
cuttings from the London Radical papers about Sir Lionel Pendragon in
Bengal? I do think it's almost ungentlemanly of so many coincidences to
happen in connection with what I'm trying to do for Ellaline. But
Kathy's such a lump, it's too great a compliment to call her a
coincidence. Anyhow, Dick met her in town, at a tea party (a "bun
worry," he called it) where he went with his dear Aunt Gwen; and when
Kathy mentioned being at school at Madame de Maluet's, he asked if she
knew Miss Lethbridge. She said of course she did, and she thought
Ellaline was a "very naughty little thing" not to write or come and see
her. She had read in the papers about the arrival of Sir Lionel with his
sister and ward, you see.
Dick remarked that he'd hardly call Miss Lethbridge a "little thing,"
whereupon Kathy defended her adjective by saying Ellaline was only about
up to her ear.
Of course that set Mr. Dick's detective bump to throbbing furiously. He
reassured me by announcing that he hadn't said any more to Kathy, but
that he'd thought a lot. In fact, he thought so much that he asked if
she'd give him a line of introduction to Madame, as he had a cousin who
wanted to go to a French school, and next time he "ran across to Paris,"
he might have a look at Versailles. Kathy gave the note, and that same
night, if you'll believe it, the horrid little boy did "run across." At
the earliest hour possible in the morning he called at the school, only
to find Madame already away for her holidays. But you know she always
leaves her sister, Mademoiselle Prado, to look after things, and when
Mademoiselle heard what Dick wanted, she showed him all over the place.
He said he would like to see photographs of the young ladies in groups,
if any such existed, because he could write his Australian cousin what
nice, happy-looking girls they were. Promptly that poor, unsuspecting
female produced the big picture Madame had done of the tea-party on the
lawn, a year ago in June, and there was I in it. But Dick was too foxy
to begin by asking questions about me. Kathy adorned the photograph
also, with Ellaline on her right and me in the perspective of her left
ear, which must have seemed to point at me accusingly. Dick could claim
Kathy quite naturally, as he'd come with her letter, and presently he
led up to me, saying he seemed to have seen me somewhere. Was I a great
friend of Miss Bennett's, and was it probable that she had my portrait?
Mademoiselle innocently said no, Miss Bennett was much more likely to
have Mees Lethbridge's portrait than Mees Brendon's, as Mees Brendon was
not a pupil of the school, only a teacher of singing, and Mees Kathy was