He had encountered companions before. This one, as she flew like a blown leaf across the floor and laughed up into his face with wide eyes produced a new effect and was a new kind.
He led her to the conservatory. He was extremely young and his fleeting emotions had never known a tight rein. An intoxicating hot-house perfume filled his nostrils. Suddenly he let himself go and was kissing the warm velvet of her slim little neck.
“You—you—you’ve spoiled everything in the world!” she cried. “Now”—with a desolate, horrible little sob—“now I can only go back—back.” She spoke as if she were Cinderella and he had made the clock strike twelve. Her voice had absolute grief in it.
“I say,”—he was contrite—“don’t speak like that. I beg pardon. I’ll grovel. Don’t— Oh, Kathryn! Come here!”
This last because his sister had suddenly appeared.
Kathryn bore Robin away. Boys like George didn’t really matter, she pointed out, though of course it was bad manners. She had been kissed herself, it seemed. As they walked between banked flowers she added:
“By the way, somebody important has been assassinated in one of the Balkan countries. Lord Coombe has just come in and is talking it over with grandmamma.”
As they neared the entrance to the ballroom she paused with a new kind of impish smile.
“The very best looking boy in all England,” she said, “ is dancing with Sara Studleigh. He dropped in by chance to call and grandmamma made him stay. His name is Donal Muir. He is Lord Coombe’s heir. Here he comes. Look!”
He was now scarcely two yards away. Almost as if he had been called he turned his eyes toward Robin and straight into hers they laughed—straight into hers.
The incident of their meeting was faultlessly correct; also, when Lady Lothwell appeared, she presented him to Robin as if the brief ceremony were one of the most ordinary in existence.
They danced for a time without a word. She wondered if he could not feel the beating of her heart.
“That—is a beautiful waltz,” he said at last, as if it were a sort of emotional confidence.
“Yes,” she answered. Only, “Yes.”
Once round the great ballroom, twice, and he gave a little laugh and spoke again.
“I am going to ask you a question. May I?”
“Yes.”
“Is your name Robin?”
“Yes.” She could scarcely breathe it.
“I thought it was. I hoped it was—after I first began to suspect. I hoped it was.”
“It is—it is.”
“Did we once play together in a garden?”
“Yes—yes.”
Back swept the years, and the wonderful happiness began again.
In the shining ballroom the music rose and fell and swelled again into ecstasy as he held her white young lightness in his arm and they swayed and darted and swooped like things of the air—while the old Duchess and Lord Coombe looked on almost unseeing and talked in murmurs of Sarajevo.
It was a soft starlit night mystically changing into dawn when Donal Muir left the tall, grave house on Eaton Square after the strangely enchanted dance given by the old Dowager Duchess of Darte. A certain impellingness of mood suggested that exercise would be a good thing and he decided to walk home. It was an impellingness of body as well as mind. He had remained later than the relative who had by chance been responsible for his being brought, an uninvited guest, to the party. The Duchess had not known that he was in London. It may also be accepted as a fact that to this festivity given for the pleasure of Mrs.
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