Not Without Thorns. Molesworth Mrs.
she looked down quickly, as if becoming conscious of his observation, and the movement recalled him to himself.
“I beg your pardon,” he began hurriedly, without quite knowing what he meant. “I did not see you when I invaded your quiet corner. Are you not going to dance?” he went on, as if speaking to a child, for almost as such he unconsciously regarded her, calmly ignoring the fact that he had not been introduced to her. “Don’t you like dancing?”
“Oh, yes, at least I think I do,” she answered, with some hesitation. “I have never danced much. I don’t care for it very much.”
Captain Chancellor looked at her again, this time with increasing interest and some perplexity. He could not make her out. She was not shy, certainly not the least awkward; but for the slightly fluctuating colour on her cheeks, he would have imagined her to be thoroughly at her ease, rather more so perhaps than he quite cared about in a girl of her tender years, for “she can’t be more than sixteen,” he said to himself, as he observed her silently, sitting there alone, gravely watching the dance which had now begun. It seemed unnatural that she should not join in it; he felt sorry for her – but yet – it was quite against his principles to risk making a spectacle of himself – he wished she would dance with some one else; he could judge of her powers in a moment then. But no one came near their corner – even Mrs Dalrymple seemed to have forgotten them both. Captain Chancellor was a kind-hearted man, the sort of man, too, to whom it came naturally to try to attract any woman with whom he might be thrown in contact. And then this girl was undoubtedly pretty, and with something out of the common about her. He began to feel himself getting good-tempered again. It was stupid work sulking in a corner on account of Roma; he had had plenty of experience of her freaks before now, much better show her he did not pay any attention to them. Just as he had reached this point in his meditations, a faint, an all but inaudible little sigh caught his ear. It carried the day.
“Don’t you find it rather wearisome to sit still, watching all this waltzing?” he said at last. “Though you don’t care much about dancing, a turn or two would be a change, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” the girl answered, raising her face to his, with a rather melancholy expression in her eyes. “Yes, I daresay it would be very nice; but no one has asked me to dance. I hardly know any one here, for it is almost the first time I have been out anywhere in this way.”
Her frankness somewhat embarrassed her companion. It is not often that young ladies calmly announce a dearth of partners as a reason for their sitting still, and Captain Chancellor hardly knew how to reply. Condolence, he feared, might seem impertinent. He took refuge, at last, in her extreme youth.
“No one could think it possible you had been out much,” he said gently. “At your age, many girls have never been out at all.” She looked up quickly at this, smiling a little, as if about to say something, but stopped. “As for not knowing any one here, we both seem in the same predicament, for I am a perfect stranger too. If no one better offers, will you condescend to give me the next dance? This one is just ending.”
A bright, almost a grateful glance was his reward.
“I didn’t understand that you were asking me to dance with you,” she said, half apologetically. “I should like it very much, but – ” here the rather stiff demureness of her manner fairly melted away, and she began to laugh. “You forget I don’t know who you are. I haven’t even heard your name.”
Captain Chancellor started. He felt considerably annoyed with himself. He was the last man to slight or ignore any recognised formality, and he could not endure to be laughed at. He drew himself up rather haughtily, and was just beginning a somewhat stilted apology, when the young lady interrupted him.
“Oh, please don’t be vexed!” she exclaimed eagerly. “I hope I haven’t said anything rude. It was so kind of you to ask me to dance, and I should like it so much! It doesn’t matter our not being regularly introduced, does it?”
“I hope not. We must consider the fog our master of ceremonies: it was under his auspices we first made each other’s acquaintance,” he replied, with a smile, for her “Oh, please don’t be vexed!” was irresistible; “and I think I do know your name. You are Miss Laurence, are you not? Your friend Mrs Dalrymple was speaking about you at dinner, and I know she quite intended asking your permission to introduce me to you. It is easy to tell you my name. It is Chancellor.”
“Captain Chancellor! Oh yes; I thought so,” she said naïvely; “but of course I was not sure. Now it is all right, isn’t it?” for by this time a new dance was beginning, and she was evidently eager to lose no more valuable time.
It was only a quadrille. They took their places, and though Miss Laurence’s gravity returned when she found herself facing so many people, an underlying expression of great content was nevertheless plainly visible in her countenance to an observer so experienced and acute as her partner, and the discovery by no means diminished his good, humour.
Volume One – Chapter Two.
Mistakes
“This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.”
There was not much conversation between Captain Chancellor and his partner during the quadrille, for Miss Laurence seemed a little afraid of her own voice in so public a position, and bestowed her attention principally on the rest of the performers. Immediately after the square dance, however, there came another waltz, for which Captain Chancellor, waxing bolder as his practised eye followed the girl’s graceful and well-balanced, though somewhat timid movements, took care to secure her. His hopes were not disappointed. She danced beautifully; and then, too, how pretty it was to see how she enjoyed it! He forgot all about Miss Eyrecourt and her unamiability.
“How well you dance! I can hardly believe you have not had much practice. With one or two very trifling alterations, your waltzing would be perfection,” he exclaimed.
“Do you really think so? I am so glad!” she replied, looking up with a sweet flushed face from the sofa, where he had found a charming corner for two. “I was so afraid you would think me very heavy and awkward. I have hardly ever danced except at home with Sydney. Certainly, I have had plenty of that kind of practice.”
“With Sydney?” he repeated, interrogatively, just as one cross-questions a child. “Your brother, I suppose?”
“Oh no; I have no brothers,” she answered; and as she said the words, across her hearer’s mind there flashed the thought, “A cousin, I’ll bet anything. These sweet simple little girls are always spoilt by some odious cousin, or male friend ‘I have known all my life,’ in the background.” But “Oh no,” she went on; “Sydney is my sister.” Captain Chancellor breathed more freely. “She should have been here to-night; but Aunt Penton was not well, and Sydney thought she should not be left alone; and she would make me come. She is so unselfish!” with a tender look in her bright eyes, and a little sigh, as if the remembrance of Sydney’s self-sacrifice somewhat marred her own enjoyment.
“Your elder sister, is she not?”
“Oh no; she is a good deal younger – nearly two years younger.”
Captain Chancellor’s eyebrows went up a little. His companion read his thoughts, though he said nothing.
“I think you fancy I am younger than I am,” she explained, with a little blush. “I am nearly nineteen. I suppose I seem younger from having been so little in society. This is the very first time I have ever been anywhere without Sydney, and I disliked it so much, I asked Mrs Dalrymple if I might come early with my father, as he was passing here, and stay with her little girls in the school-room till after dinner, so that I might be in the drawing-room when every one came in.”
Captain Chancellor smiled at her confession; but its frankness made it the more difficult to realise that she was not the mere child he had guessed her. “And that was how you came to be standing out there in the fog, ‘all forlorn,’ then?” he returned. “Do you know you really frightened me? I don’t