Part 18

A good many were introduced to me; and Dick brought his aunt very early, because, he said, he didn't want to find all my dances gone. You can believe I hadn't saved any for him! But as a matter of fact, I had kept back two, thinking Sir Lionel might ask me; for after his many kindnesses I shouldn't have liked to seem not to want to dance with him, you see. When he didn't ask at first, I supposed it might be because he wasn't a dancing man (horrid expression!--sounds like a trained bear); 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."