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Hefty put on his helmet in the cab and pulled down the visor, and when he alighted the crowd around the door was too greatly awed to jeer, but stood silent with breathless admiration. He had great difficulty in mounting the somewhat steep flight of stairs which led to the dancing-room, and considered gloomily that in the event of a fire he would have a very small chance of getting out alive.
"Have I the pleasure of this dance?" he asked her finally, in a lull of the music. She bowed assent, and as if moved by a common impulse they strolled out of the dancing-room into the cool, quaint garden, where jessamines gave out an overpowering perfume, and a caged mocking-bird complained melodiously to the full moon in the sky.
It is, I think, more than probable that Mrs Conway Sparkes had been brought in by Lady Monk as the only way of removing the Duchess from her stool. Just within the dancing-room Lady Glencora found her husband, standing in a corner, looking as though he were making calculations. "I'm going away," said he, coming up to her. "I only just came because I said I would. Shall you be late?"
I made some slight reply, rather indifferent than courteous, and continued to move away. He coolly planted himself in my path. "Stay here awhile," said he: "it is so hot in the dancing-room; besides, you don't dance; you have not had a partner to-night."
The air without was filled with the trampling of hoofbeats on greensward. A light-horse troop was surrounding the manor house. I drew her arm in mine and led her back to the ball-room; 'twas now come to this, that open publicity was our best safeguard. "We must find Dick," said I. "Have you seen him?" "No." Together we made the slow circuit of the dancing-room, but Jennifer was not to be found.
All was fermentation within it as in a bee-hive; violins were playing; the polska was being danced; women's gowns swung round, sweeping the walls; iron-heeled shoes beat upon the floor; and the dust flew up to the ceiling. After Petrea had sought in vain for somebody outside the dancing-room, she was compelled to go in, and then she saw instantly that there was a wedding.
The groups of cottagers in the park were gradually diminishing, the young ones being attracted towards the lights that were beginning to gleam from the windows of the gallery in the abbey, which was to be their dancing-room, and some of the sober elder ones thinking it time to go home quietly.
Gunilla and he shouted as if desperate against each other. The company rose from the supper-table in full strife, and adjourned to the dancing-room. "Music, in heaven's name! music!" exclaimed the Assessor with a gesture of despair, and Elise and the Colonel's widow hastened to the piano.
She seemed to give herself up to it now as though the old days had come back to her. Lady Monk, creeping to the intermediate door between her den and the dancing-room, looked in on them, and then crept back again. Mrs Marsham and Mr Bott standing together just inside the other door, near to the staircase, looked on also in horror.
Two young men leaned against the wall of the dancing-room, close to the door, both smoking cigars. They wore evening dress, considerably rumpled, and their attitudes were careless. The elder of the two was Tony Mostyn, a clever but dissipated artist of the decadent school, who steered his life by the rule of indulgence and worked as little as possible. "It's rather dull," he said; "eh, old chap?"
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