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June Storran had no possibility of knowing that this dark, slender woman to whom she had let her rooms was the famous dancer, Magda Wielitzska, since the rooms had been engaged in the name of Miss Vallincourt, but she responded to Magda's unfailing charm as a flower to the sun. "It will be lovely for us, too," she replied.
Meanwhile Quarrington had established Magda at a corner table in the empty supper-room and was seeing to it that Lady Arabella's commands were obeyed, in spite of Magda's assurances that she was not in the least hungry. "Then you ought to be," he replied. "After dancing. Besides, unlike the rest of us, you had no dinner." "Oh, I had a light meal at six o'clock.
And coincidentally, just as in the case of her father, the abrupt downfall of her hopes, the sudden shattering of her happiness, seemed as though it were due to the intervention of an angry God. The fanatical Vallincourt blood which ran in Magda's veins caused her to respond instinctively to this aspect of the matter.
I don't suppose even Magda herself knew she could ever go through all she has done just for an ideal." Then very quietly, very simply and touchingly, she told him the story of all that had happened, of Magda's final intention of becoming a working member of the sisterhood, and of Lady Arabella's letter summoning Michael back to England.
The following evening was the occasion of Magda's first appearance at the Imperial after the publication of her engagement, and the theatre was packed from floor to ceiling. "House Full" boards were exhibited outside at quite an early hour, and when Magda appeared on the stage she was received with such enthusiasm that for a time it was impossible to proceed with the ballet.
"Then I suppose we shall all of us have to rally round and get you out of them," she said cheerfully. "Perhaps perhaps you wouldn't be able to." There was a strange note of foreboding in Magda's voice an accent of fatality, and despite herself Gillian experienced a reflex sense of uneasiness. "Nonsense!" she said brusquely. "What on earth has put all these ridiculous notions into your head?"
"No wonder we are all in love with you!" he exclaimed in low, vehement tones; adding quickly, as he detected a flicker of apprehension in Magda's eyes: "But you need not fear to dance with me. I will be as your brother I will go on being 'decent." And he was.
It was just at this moment that Davilof appeared on the scene, pausing abruptly in the doorway as he caught sight of Magda's laughing face bent above the fiery red head. There was something very charming in her expression of eager, light-hearted abandonment to the fun of the moment.
I suppose they'll have to come some day" with a small grimace of disgust. "You'll be snowed under with them," Gillian assured her encouragingly. The public announcement of the engagement preceded Magda's return from Netherway by a few days, so that by the time the Hermitage house-party actually broke up, its various members returning to town, all London was fairly humming with the news.
The fact that the Spaniard had been a dancer gave an irrefutable reality to the tale; Michael so worshipped every form of dancing. "Never give your heart to any man." Her mother's last cynical warning beat in Magda's brain with a dull iteration that almost maddened her. She put her hand up to her throat, feeling as if she were choking.
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