Now he very probably had not noticed her at all until Billy Watts had him face to face with her, but he could no more help saying such things than he could help his breathing. He was built just that way.

But Arethusa found no reason to doubt the sincerity of these charming words. And his little way of looking at her and of leaning toward her as he talked, were a perfect corollary, seeming to single her out from among all these hundred or more feminine beings in the vast room as the one whose company he most ardently desired. "These other stupid folks do not exist for me at present," proclaimed his manner, "and I am just where I most want to be."

Her heart fluttered painfully. She could only stand there at first, silently flushing and paling by turns, at a loss for the words of a reply that should suitably acknowledge such a marvelous greeting of her insignificant self. Then the music started up in the ball room at the other end of the hall, and she moved away with all the rest of the Party toward the sound, at Mr. Bennet's side, still quite unable to find her generally so-ready tongue.

"Shall we dance?" asked Mr. Bennet courteously, as they walked. His voice was another of his distinct attractions, rather deep and with the slightest possible drawl.

Arethusa paused just under the broad arch of the ball-room doorway, and so Mr. Bennet paused also, to watch the dancers for a moment, all of them bending and turning and twisting to a tune of such impelling rhythm that it would have made a wooden-legged man almost to attempt the impossible, and then to curse his fate; then she lifted troubled eyes to Mr. Bennet.

"But I don't dance what they're dancing."

"Oh, yes, you do, I'm sure," with the intimation in his tone that she was sure to be the very best dancer on the floor. "It's only the one-step."

Arethusa could not help but laugh.

"Well, it certainly doesn't look anything like the one-step that _I_ know! You see, Mr. Bennet, I've never been to any Parties. Timothy just taught me some down in our barn." She was beginning to feel a little less awed by his magnificence as a Man, for he was, after all, human, and quite inclined to be kind.

"Then let me give you another lesson, now.... Do, please. You won't really need it as a lesson though, I know."

Still she hesitated. Yet her feet unconsciously kept time to the gay music as she stood, just watching.

"Surely you won't confer a favor on this Timothy person you'd deny to me," and Arethusa was quite convinced there was a wee tinge of reproachful jealousy in Mr. Bennet's attractive voice. "I may not prove to be so good a teacher as he is, but I shall certainly do my best."

Arethusa laughed again; with real merriment this time.

The very idea of Timothy as a better teacher of anything than this Wonderful Mr. Bennet!

The picture of herself in those blue print dresses she wore around the Farm and Timothy in khaki trousers and blue flannel shirt, hopping about on the barn floor (which, though clean-swept and smooth, was hardly meant for dancing) to tunes which were hummed and whistled by each alternately, rose before her; and she compared it in its utter inferiority with this picture of herself in this Heavenly Green Frock and Mr. Bennet in his Perfect Evening Clothes, the shining floor which stretched away from them, and the lilt of the band music which went to her head like wine.

She shook her head. "But suppose I should fall down or something. This floor looks so dreadfully slick and hard to stand up on. I wouldn't mind a bit if I was awkward with Timothy. But...."

"I'm getting rather jealous of Timothy, I'm afraid," said Mr. Bennet.

"Miss Worthington, you couldn't be awkward if you tried. And you won't fall down, I can promise to take care of that. Please give me this great pleasure."

So Arethusa allowed herself to be thus charmingly persuaded.

But it must be confessed that their start was a bit awkward.

Arethusa was horribly self-conscious, and not at all sure, despite his rea.s.surance, that she was going to manage this new venture. After a few moments, however, and his low-spoken command to let herself be guided, her natural-born instinct to dance a.s.serted itself, the self-consciousness wore away, and she was one-stepping with the best of any on that floor.

She was more certainly meant for a dancer. She was as light as a feather, for all her height, and like a piece of thistledown she swayed and circled about the room in perfect time to the music. She seemed to feel instinctively the beat of the measures, and her flying feet obeyed Mr. Bennet's guidance, as if he and she had danced together all of their lives. Mr. Bennet himself was a truly wonderful exponent of the art. He danced with a grace and ease that few men ever attain, and he had an arm of sureness at his partner's back that took her safely through that crowded room without a single b.u.mp or mishap. Had Arethusa but known it, there was no one at the Party who could so well have conducted her in her first real effort of this kind as Mr. Bennet.

It was over much too soon to please her. She could have gone on for hours, just like that without a pause, and without once tiring.

"Why, you dance beautifully!" exclaimed Mr. Bennet, when the music stopped. "I verily believe," very softly, "that you were fibbing when you said you had danced so little!"

She looked up at him shyly, from under her long lashes, and blushed just a bit. "That was you. I couldn't have danced with anyone else that way. Timothy doesn't dance at all like that!"

Now this was the rankest ingrat.i.tude on Arethusa's part. For had it not been for Timothy's surrept.i.tious lessons, so kindly and willingly given, she would never have experienced the intense pleasure of this one-step with Mr. Bennet. But Arethusa was honestly surprised at her own swallow-like ability to keep time to music that was played instead of whistled.

Then Mr. Harrison caught sight of her and rushed across the room to claim her. He had been hunting everywhere for her, he declared.

Then Mr. Watts came in his turn, and inquired saucily, as he "broke in," if she had found Mr. Bennet as charming as he looked. But she laughed at him merrily, for his friendly teasing. She was too happy to be offended at anything.

And she laughed and chatted away with these two oldest acquaintances her most enthusiastic and Arethusa-like self; with every one introduced to her she had just as Wonderful a Time. There were a great many who asked to be introduced to her, for her shining eyes and her very evident enjoyment of everything she did made her an object of interest to nearly everybody who observed her. Arethusa was really one of the belles of the evening; such unreserved happiness as hers is bound to attract. Consequently, the Party fulfilled her most sanguine expectations as to what a Party should be, although she did not know how large was her own personal share in this fulfillment.

She entirely forgot that she had ever prepared a Topic of Conversation for the Occasion; she made no other mention of moths and b.u.t.terflies; not once did she quote a line of Poetry. Her words poured forth in as mad a rush, as gaily inconsequential, as the words of the most hardened Party-goer who has ever been an a.s.sistance to her hostess in adding to the enjoyment of her fellow guests. Without making any conscious effort to do so, Arethusa followed Mr. Watts' kindly advice, and his words as to the result proved delightfully true.

The terpsich.o.r.ean attempts which she made during the evening without Mr. Bennet's able guidance, might have been managed with a little more gratifying success, had not her eyes been so p.r.o.ne to follow him in his whirling about the room, wherever she could, as he honored other ladies with his attentions. But when she did miss step, or stumbled, her apologies were so pretty, and she was so sincere in her confused regrets, that it could make no difference to any one with his heart in the right place.

Yet Mr. Bennet came back to Arethusa herself quite often to ask for dances--a truly flattering number of times--for it was a kindly fate that had given her that lightness of foot and her undeniable grace.

Then too, Mr. Bennet, like Mr. Watts, knew Ross rather well, and he wanted to be nice to Ross's daughter for various reasons. And last, but not least, her ingenuous admiration of his own attractive person amused Mr. Bennet more than he had been amused for a long while.

There was one last wild romp of a dance as an encore from the more good-natured members of the orchestra, while the other musicians packed their instruments, and then the First Real Party was only a thing to be remembered.

Mr. Bennet made a special point of telling Arethusa good-night, and he bent lingeringly over her hand as he did so, in his own inimitable way of making it seem the very hardest parting he had ever had to make.

"I'm coming to see you some time, if I may," he said.

Her heart almost stopped beating at this. Then it raced on again to beat in quick, little jumps. She lifted young, frankly adoring eyes to the handsome man before her, and quite suddenly, without a word of real warning, Arethusa knew....

She had _fallen in love_!

But it was not as she had fallen in love with Elinor, and it was not such love as she gave Ross or Miss Asenath or even Timothy; for this was without doubt the Miracle she had read about so many times under the hollow tree in Miss Asenath's Woods. And it had come just as she had always dreamed it would come, with a Hand-clasp and a Glance.

The hand in Mr. Bennet's holding trembled and grew cold before Arethusa could withdraw it. Her misbehaving heart almost interfered with her breathing. But the world around them went on as casually unaware of the Miracle as if neither Arethusa nor Mr. Bennet existed, when it should surely have been hushed into a Startled Silence by What had happened.

All through that night, Arethusa wandered with a tall man of long-lashed hazel eyes of marvelous beauty, through a country which was a Country of Rare Delight, even if only a Country of Dreaming. And as they wandered, he bent his head again and again to whisper, in a deep drawling voice, Words which bore a remarkable resemblance to some of the lyrics of the early nineteenth-century poets, and the pages of conversation in Arethusa's much read romances.

What though the Gentleman of the Dream wore a modern suit of commonplace evening clothes, instead of Ruffles and a Velvet Coat and Satin Small-clothes? It did not prevent, in the Dream, his pressing his Hand to his Heart at moments when it was logical that he should have done so, nor did it rob his Voice of the Proper Pa.s.sionate Inflection.

Nor did it keep the cardiac region of the Arethusa of the Dream from fluttering in an altogether delightful way.

CHAPTER XVII

Ross took Arethusa out to the Country Club for a round of golf the next afternoon, and as it was the first and only time she had ever spied a golf club, it is not at all difficult to imagine what sort of game she played. It deserved a name all of its own; and her method of holding her club would have brought tears to the eyes of any true devotee of the sport. But from the standpoint of pure enjoyment for the two most intimately concerned, the occasion was a great success.

"I don't believe I care very much for golf," she remarked decidedly, after she had almost dug a trench around her ball on the second tee, "and I believe you move that ball, Father, when I'm not looking with my stick up over my head."

Ross protested his innocence, and insisted that she try once more. So she did. But when she missed it this time also, she was firm in her resolve to quit.

"You do move it, Father!" she repeated. "I just know you do! To tease me! Because, why shouldn't my stick come down in the right place when I know exactly where it is when I start to hit it, if you don't push it away?"

"Because of one of the cardinal rules of the game, my dear, 'Keep your eye on the ball.' You are demonstrating its truth of that aphorism every time you take your eye off."