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Page 15
Dora's fair brow grows darker and darker as she watches Florence, and
notes the smile that lights her beautiful face as she makes some answer
to one of Sir Adrian's sallies. Where is Dynecourt, that he has not been
on the spot to prevent this dance, she wonders. She grows angry, and
would have stamped her little foot with impatient wrath at this moment,
but for the fear of displaying her vexation.
As she is inwardly anathematizing Arthur, he emerges from the throng,
and, the dance being at an end, reminds Miss Delmaine that the next is
his.
Florence unwillingly removes her hand from Sir Adrian's arm, and lays it
upon Arthur's. Most disdainfully she moves away with him, and suffers
him to lead her to another part of the room. And when she dances with
him it is with evident reluctance, as he knows by the fact that she
visibly shrinks from him when he encircles her waist with his arm.
Sir Adrian, who has noticed none of these symptoms, going up to Dora,
solicits her hand for this dance.
"You are not engaged, I hope?" he says anxiously. It is a kind of
wretched comfort to him to be near Florence's true friend. If not the
rose, she has at least some connection with it.
"I am afraid I am," Dora responds, raising her limpid eyes to his.
"Naughty man, why did you not come sooner? I thought you had forgotten
me altogether, and so got tired of keeping barren spots upon my card for
you."
"I couldn't help it--I was engaged. A man in his own house has always
a bad time of it looking after the impossible people," says Adrian
evasively.
"Poor Florence! Is she so very impossible?" asks Dora, laughing, but
pretending to reproach him.
"I was not speaking of Miss Delmaine," says Adrian, flushing hotly. "She
is the least impossible person I ever met. It is a privilege to pass
one's time with her."
"Yet it is with her you have passed the last hour that you hint has
been devoted to bores," returns Dora quietly. This is a mere feeler,
but she throws it out with such an air of certainty that Sir Adrian is
completely deceived, and believes her acquainted with his _t�te-�-t�te_
with Florence in the dimly lit anteroom.
"Well," he admits, coloring again, "your cousin was rather upset by the
acting, I think, and I just stayed with her until she felt equal to
joining us all again."
"Ah!" exclaims Dora, who now knows all she had wanted to know.
"But you must not tell me you have no dances left for me," says Adrian
gayly. "Come, let me see your card." He looks at it, and finds it indeed
full. "I am an unfortunate," he adds.
"I think," says Dora, with the prettiest hesitation, "if you are
sure it would not be an unkind thing to do, I could scratch out this
name"--pointing to her partner's for the coming dance.
"I am not sure at all," responds Sir Adrian, laughing. "I am positive it
will be awfully unkind of you to deprive any fellow of your society; but
be unkind, and scratch him out for my sake."
He speaks lightly, but her heart beats high with hope.
"For your sake," she repeats softly drawing her pencil across the name
written on her programme and substituting his.
"But you will give me more than this one dance?" queries Adrian. "Is
there nobody else you can condemn to misery out of all that list?"
"You are insatiable," she returns, blushing, and growing confused. "But
you shall have it all your own way. Here"--giving him her card--"take
what waltzes you will." She waltzes to perfection, and she knows it.
"Then this, and this, and this," says Adrian, striking out three names
on her card, after which they move away together and mingle with the
other dancers.
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