"I thought I should never be able to get a dance with you; you see,"--smiling--"when one is the belle of the evening, one grows difficult. But you _might_ have kept a fifth or sixth for a poor outsider like me. An old friend too."

"Old friends don't count at a dance, I'm afraid," says she, with a smile as genial as his own; "though for the matter of that you could have had the first; _no one_--hard as it may be to make you believe it--had asked the belle of the evening for that."

This is not quite true. Many had asked for it, Dysart amongst others; but she had kept it open for--the one who didn't want it. However, fibs of this sort one blinks at where pretty girls are the criminals. Her tone is delicately sarcastic. She would willingly suppress the sarcasm altogether as beneath her, but she is very angry; and when a woman is angry there is generally somebody to pay.

"Oh! that _first_!" says he, with a gesture of impatience. "I shan't forgive Isabel in a hurry about that; she ruined my evening--up to _this_. However," throwing off as it were unpleasant memories by a shake of his head, "don't let me spoil my one good time by dwelling upon a bad one. Here I am now, at all events; here is comfort, here is peace. The hour I have been longing for is mine at last."

"It might have been yours considerably earlier," says Miss Kavanagh with very noteworthy deliberation, unmoved by his lover-like glances, which after all have more truth in them than most of his declarations. She sits playing with her fan, and with a face expressionless as any sphinx.

"Oh! my _dear_ girl!" says Mr. Beauclerk reproachfully, "how can you say that! You know in one's sister's house one must--eh? And she laid positive commands on me----"

"To dance the first dance with Miss Maliphant?"

"Now, that's not like you," says Mr. Beauclerk very gently. "It's not just. When I found Miss Duns...o...b.. engaged for that ridiculous quadrille, what could I do? _You_ were engaged to Blake. I was looking aimlessly round me, cursing my luck in that I had not thrown up even my sister's wishes and secured before it was too late the only girl in the room I cared to dance with when Isabel came again. 'Not dancing,' says she; 'and there's Miss Maliphant over there, partnerless!'"

He tells all this with as genuine an air as if it was not false from start to finish.

"You _know_ Isabel," says he, laughing airily; "she takes the oddest fancies at times. Miss Maliphant is her latest craze. Though what she can see in her----A _nice_ girl. Thoroughly nice--essentially _real_--a little _too_ real perhaps," with a laugh so irresistible that even Miss Kavanagh against her will is compelled to join in it.

"Honest all through, I admit; but as a _waltzer_! Well, well, we shouldn't be too severe--but really, there you know, she leaves _everything_ to be desired. And I've been victimized not once, but twice--_three_ times."

"It is nothing remarkable," says Miss Kavanagh, coldly. "Many very charming girls do not dance well. It is a gift."

"A very precious one. When a charming girl can't waltz, she ought to learn how to sit down charmingly, and not oppress innocent people. As for Miss Maliphant!" throwing out his large handsome hands expressively, "_she_ certainly should not dance. Her complexion doesn't stand it. Did you notice her?"

"No," icily.

"Ah, you wouldn't, you know. I could see how thoroughly well occupied _you_ were! Not a thought for even an old friend; and besides you're a girl in ten thousand. Nothing petty or small about you. Now, another woman would not have failed to notice the fatal tendency towards rubicundity that marks Miss Maliphant's nose whenever----"

"I do so dislike discussing people behind their backs," says Miss Kavanagh, slowly. "I always think it is so _unfair_. They can't defend themselves. It is like maligning the dead."

"Miss Maliphant isn't dead at all events. She is dreadfully alive," says Mr. Beauclerk, totally unabashed. He laughs gaily. To refuse to be lectured was a rule he had laid down for his own guidance early in life.

Those people who will not see when they ought to be offended have generally the best of the game.

"Would you have her dead?" asks Joyce, with calm interrogation.

"I don't remember saying I would have her _any_ way," says he, still evidently clinging to the frivolous mood. "And at all events I wouldn't have her _dancing_. It disagrees with her nose. It makes her suggestive; it betrays one into the making of bad parodies. One I made to-night when looking at her; I couldn't resist it. For once in her life you see she was irresistible. Hear it. 'Oh! my love's got a red, red nose!' Ha! ha!

Not half bad, eh? It kept repeating itself in my brain all the time I was looking at her."

"I thought you liked her," says Joyce, lifting her large dark eyes for the first time to his. Beautiful eyes! a little shocked now--a little cold--almost entreating. Surely, surely, he will not destroy her ideal of him.

"You think I am censorious," says he readily, "cruel almost; but to _you_"--with delicate flattery--"surely I may speak to _you_ as I would speak to no other. May I not?" He leans a little forward, and compelling the girl's reluctant gaze, goes on speaking. It chafes him that she should put him on his defence; but some _one_ divine instinct within him warns him not to break with her entirely. "Still," says he, in a low tone, always with his eyes on hers, "I see that you condemn me."

"Condemn you! No! Why should _I_ be your judge?"

"You _are_, however--and my judge and jury too. I cannot bear to think that you should despise me. And all because of that wretched girl."

"I don't despise you," says the girl, quickly. "If you were really despicable I should not like you as well as I do; I am only sorry that you should say little unkind things of a girl like Miss Maliphant, who, if not beautiful, is surely to be regarded in a very kindly light."

"Do you know," says Mr. Beauclerk, gently, "I think you are the one sweet character in the world." There is a great amount of belief in his tone, perhaps half of it is honest. "I never met any one like you. Women as a rule are willing to tear each other to pieces but you--you condone all faults; that is why I----"

A pause. He leans forward. His eyes are eloquent; his tongue alone refrains from finishing the declaration that he had begun. To the girl beside him, however, ignorant of subterfuge, unknowing of the wiles that run in and out of society like a thread, his words sound sweet--the sweeter for the very hesitation that accompanies them.

"I am not so perfect as you think me," says she, rather sadly--her voice a little faint.

"That is true," says he quickly, as though compelled against his will to find fault with her. "A while ago you were angry with me because I was driven to waste my time with people uncongenial to me. _That_ was unfair if you like." He throws her own accusation back at her in the gentlest fashion. "I danced with this, that, and the other person it is true, but do you not know where my heart was all this time?"

He pauses for a moment, just long enough to make more real his question, but hardly long enough to let her reply to it. To bring matters to a climax, would not suit him at all.

"Yes, you _do_ know," says he, seeing her about to speak. "And _yet_ you misjudge me. If--if I were to tell you that I would rather be with you than with any other woman in the world, you would believe me, wouldn't you?"

He stoops over her, and taking her hand presses it fondly, lingeringly.

"Answer me."

"Yes," says Joyce in a low tone. It has not occurred to her that his words are a question rather than an a.s.severation. That he loves her, seems to her certain. A soft glow illumines her cheeks; her eyes sink beneath his; the idea that she is happy, or at all events _ought_ to be happy, fills her with a curious wonderment. Do people always feel so strange, so surprised, so _unsure_, when love comes to them?

"Yet you _did_ doubt," says Beauclerk, giving her hand a last pressure, and now nestling back amongst his cushions with all the air of a man who has fought and conquered and has been given his reward. "Well, don't let us throw an unpleasant memory into this happy hour. As I have said,"

taking up her fan and idly, if gracefully, waving it to and fro, "after all the turmoil of the fight it is sweet to find oneself at last in the haven where one would be."

He is smiling at Joyce--the gayest, the most candid smile in the world.

Smiles become him. He is looking really handsome and _happy_ at finding himself thus alone with her. Sincerity declares itself in every line of his face. Perhaps he _is_ as sincere as he has ever yet been in his life. The one thing that he unquestionably does regard with interest beyond his own poor precious bones, is the exquisite bit of nature's workmanship now sitting beside him.

At this present moment, in spite of his flattering words, his smiles and telling glances, she is still a little cold, a little uncertain, a phase of manner that renders her indescribably charming to the one watching her.

Beauclerk indeed is enjoying himself immensely. To a man of his temperament to be able to play upon a nature as fine, as honest, as pure as Joyce's is to know a keen delight. That the girl is dissatisfied, vaguely, nervously dissatisfied, he can read as easily as though the workings of her soul lay before him in broad type, and to a.s.suage those half-defined misgivings of hers is a task that suits him. He attacks it _con amore_.

"How silent you are," says he, very gently, when he has let quite a long pause occur.

"I am tired, I think."

"Of me?"

"No."

"Of what then?" He has found that as a rule there is nothing a woman likes better than to be asked to define her own feelings, Joyce, however, disappoints him.

"I don't know. Sitting up so late I suppose."

"Look here!" says he, in a voice so full of earnest emotion that Joyce involuntarily stares at him; "_I_ know what is the matter with you. You are fighting against your better nature. You are _trying_ to be ungenerous. You are trying to believe what you know is not true. Tell me--_honestly_ mind--are you not forcing yourself to regard me as a monster of insincerity?"

"You are wrong," says she, slowly. "I am forcing myself, on the contrary, to believe you a very giant of sincerity."

"And you find that difficult?"

"Yes."

An intense feeling of admiration for her sways Beauclerk. How new a thing to find a girl so beautiful, with so much intelligence. Surely instinct is the great lever that moves humanity. Why has not this girl the thousands that render Miss Maliphant so very desirable? What a _betise_ on the part of Mother Nature. Alas! it would be too much to expect from that n.i.g.g.ardly Dame. Beauty, intelligence, wealth! All rolled into one personality. Impossible!