not as nice as it looks,” she said.
He laughed at her with masculine indulgence.
“Pretty boy,” she said, stroking his chin.
“Am I?” he murmured languidly.
“Cheek!” she cried, and she boxed his ears. Then “Oh, pore fing!” she said, and kissed him.
She turned round to wink at my mother and at Lettie. She found the latter sitting in the old position with Leslie, two in a chair. He was toying with her arm; holding it and stroking it.
“Isn’t it lovely?” he said, kissing the forearm, “so warm and yet so white. Io — it reminds one of Io.”
“Somebody else talking about heifers,” murmured Alice to George.
“Can you remember,” said Leslie, speaking low, “that man in Merimée who wanted to bite his wife and taste her blood?”
“I do,” said Lettie. “Have you a strain of wild beast too?”
“Perhaps,” he laughed. “I wish these folks had gone. Your hair is all loose in your neck — it looks lovely like that, though —”
Alice, the mocker, had unbuttoned the cuff of the thick wrist that lay idly on her knee, and had pushed his sleeve a little way.
“Ah!” she said. “What a pretty arm, brown as an over-baked loaf!”
He watched her smiling.
“Hard as a brick,” she added.
“Do you like it?” he drawled.
“No,” she said emphatically, in a tone that meant “yes”. “It makes me feel shivery.” He smiled again.
She superposed her tiny, pale, flower-like hands on his. He lay back looking at them curiously.
“Do you feel as if your hands were full of silver?” she asked almost wistfully, mocking.
“Better than that,” he replied gently.
“And your heart full of gold?” she mocked.
“Of hell!” he replied briefly.
Alice looked at him searchingly.
“And am I like a blue-bottle buzzing in your window to keep you company?” she asked.
He laughed.
“Good-bye,” she said, slipping down and leaving him. “Don’t go,” he said — but too late.
The irruption of Alice into the quiet, sentimental party was like taking a bright light into a sleeping hen-roost. Everybody jumped up and wanted to do something. They cried out for a dance.
“Emily — play a waltz — you won’t mind, will you, George? What! You don’t dance, Tom? Oh, Marie!”
“I don’t mind, Lettie,” protested Marie.
“Dance with me, Alice,” said George, smiling, “and Cyril will take Miss Tempest.”
“Glory! — come on — do or die!” said Alice.
We began to dance. I saw Lettie watching, and I looked round. George was waltzing with Alice, dancing passably, laughing at her remarks. Lettie was not listening to what her lover was saying to her; she was watching the laughing pair. At the end she went to George.
“Why!” she said, “you can —
“Did you think I couldn’t?” he said. “You are pledged for a minuet and a valeta with me — you remember?”
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
“Yes. But —
“I went to Nottingham and learned.”
“Why — because? — Very well, Leslie, a mazurka. Will you play it, Emily — Yes, it is quite easy. Tom, you look quite happy talking to the Mater.”
We danced the mazurka with the same partners. He did it better than I expected — without much awkwardness — but stiffly. However, he moved quietly through the dance, laughing and talking abstractedly all the time with Alice.
Then Lettie cried a change of partners, and they took their valeta. There was a little triumph in his smile.
“Do you congratulate me?” he said.
“I am surprised,” she answered.
“So am I. But I congratulate myself.”
“Do you? Well, so do I.”
“Thanks! You’re beginning at last.”
“What?” she asked.
“To believe in me.”
“Don’t begin to talk again,” she pleaded sadly, “nothing vital.”
“Do you like dancing with me?” he asked
“Now, be quiet — that’s real,” she replied.
“By Heaven, Lettie, you make me laugh!”
“Do I?” she said —“What if you married Alice — soon.”
“I— Alice! — Lettie!! Besides, I’ve only a hundred pounds in the world, and no prospects whatever. That’s why — well — I shan’t marry anybody — unless it’s somebody with money.”
“I’ve a couple of thousand or so of my own —”
“Have you? It would have done nicely,” he said, smiling. “You are different tonight,” she said, leaning on him.
“Am I?” he replied —“It’s because things are altered too. They’re settled one way now — for the present at least.”
“Don’t forget the two steps this time,” said she, smiling, and adding seriously, “You see, I couldn’t help it.”
“No, why not?”
“Things! I have been brought up to expect it — everybody expected it — and you’re bound to do what people expect you to do — you can’t help it. We can’t help ourselves, we’re all chess-men,” she said.
“Ay,” he agreed, but doubtfully.
“I wonder where it will end,” she said.
“Lettie!” he cried, and his hand closed in a grip on hers.
“Don’t — don’t say anything — it’s no good now, it’s too late. It’s done; and what is done, is done. If you talk any more,
