"Me?" The lady gave him a look sidewise from dewy blue eyes, as if to see whether he were serious. He perceived that she with effort kept her dimples from denting in. He could not be sure what the joke was. But she went on, as if there had been no joke: "I was brought up a Baptist. My pa and ma considered it wicked to dance, so would never let me learn. It doesn't look very wicked to me."

She watched the dancers with an earnestly following eye, preoccupied, he supposed, with the moral aspect of their embraces and gyrations.

"It looks easy enough," she said, with suppressed excitement, immensely fascinated. "I should think anybody could do that. You hop on this foot, you slide, you hop on that foot, you slide. I believe I could do it. No, no, I mustn't let myself be tempted. I don't want to be a sight." Her voice had wavered; it suddenly came out bold. "My land!" she exclaimed full-bloodedly, "there goes a woman who's not a bit slimmer than me!

Look here, let's try. Not right before everybody. I see a side room where it's nice and dark. Come on in there." As, hardly m.u.f.fling a gleam of peculiar and novel amus.e.m.e.nt, he escorted her toward the room indicated, she rea.s.sured him, "I'm big, but I'm light on my feet."

Charlie was afterward fond of telling that he had taught Mrs. Hawthorne to dance. But the single lesson he gave her did not of a truth take her beyond the point where, holding hands with him, like children, and counting one-two-three, she tried hopping on this foot, then on the other. For Mrs. Foss, who seemed to have specially at heart that the new people should enjoy themselves, in her idea of securing this end, brought one person after the other to be introduced.

How carefully selected these were, or how diplomatically prepared, the good hostess alone could know.

"Oh, I'm having such a good time!" Mrs. Hawthorne sighed from a full and happy heart, later in the evening, having gone to sit beside her hostess on the little corner sofa which that tired woman had selected for a moment's rest. The dancing was pa.s.sing before them. "It's the loveliest party I ever was to. What delightful friends you have, Mrs. Foss, and what a lot of them! I've made ever so many friends, too, this evening.

Mrs. Satterlee has told me about the Home she's interested in, and Miss Seymour about the church-fair, and I've had a good talk with the minister. Those are three nice girls of the banker's, aren't they?

Florence, Francesca, and Beatrice, commonly known as Flick, Fran, and Trix, they told me. Mr. Hunt, the nephew, is nice, too; we get on like sliding down-hill. They're all going to come and see me.--Mrs.

Foss,"--her attention had veered,--"do look at that little fellow playing the piano! Isn't he _great_! But isn't he comical, too!

I've been noticing him all the evening. He fascinates me. I never heard such splendid playing. The bouncing parts make my feet twitch to dance, but the sighful, wind-in-the-willow parts make me want to just lean back and close my eyes. I could listen till the cows come home. I call it a wonderful gift."

Mrs. Foss looked over at the little Italian, the unpretentious musical hack whom one sent for when there was to be dancing, and paid--it was all he asked--so very little. Her eyebrows went up a point as she smiled. It was true, she remarked it for the first time, that his hands flew over the keys with an air of breezy virtuosity. He raised them from the keyboard and brought them down again with the action of a snorting high-stepping horse. When the pa.s.sage was loud he nearly lifted himself off the stool with pounding; when it was soft he tickled the ivories with the delicacy of raindrops, at the same time diminishing his person till he seemed the size of a fairy. Now and then he tossed his head, as if champing a bit, and the bunch of black frizz over his left temple trembled. A decidedly comic figure he appeared to Mrs. Foss.

"I will tell Signor Ceccherelli what you say," she amiably promised. "I am sure it will please him."

Leslie, whose responsibilities kept her from dancing her young fill at her own parties, sought Mrs. Hawthorne still later in the evening, when she thought that lady might have had enough of Mr. Hunt senior sitting beside her. The heavy old banker was not considered very entertaining, and everybody in Florence knew his way of sticking at the side of a good-looking woman. Lest this one, so evidently making herself pleasant, should be unduly taxed, Leslie stepped in to free her, tactfully interested the banker in a game of cards going on upstairs, and took the place he vacated--took it for just a minute, as a bird perches.

"No, you don't!" Mrs. Hawthorne laid a hand on her arm when she seemed near dashing off to bring somebody else to present. "You've done the social act till you ought to be tired, if you aren't. Sit here by me a moment and take it easy. This party doesn't need any nursing. It's the loveliest party I ever was to."

Leslie looked off in front of her to verify the statement, and unreluctantly settled down on the little sofa to rest awhile. She liked Mrs. Hawthorne. One could not help liking her, as she had had occasion to a.s.sert and rea.s.sert in defense against a vague body of reasons for not adopting the new-comer into the sacred circle of friends, or launching her on the waters of their little world. Now, as they chatted, she said to herself again that if Mrs. Hawthorne's homeliness of phrase were not a simple thing of playfulness, a disclaimer of the affectation of elegance in talk as stilted, b.u.mptious, unsuited to a proper modesty, it could very well pa.s.s for that. Mrs. Hawthorne seldom expressed herself quite seriously. As she seldom looked serious either, one could hardly hear her say it was the loveliest party she ever was to without suspecting her of a humorous intention. By the sly gleam of her eye one should know she was doing it to amuse you, imitating a child, a country-woman, a shop-girl, for the sake of promoting an easy pleasantness. With her bearing of entire dignity, her honest handsomeness, her air of secure and generous wealth, she was truly not one whom the ordinary public would feel disposed to seek reasons for excluding. Leslie and her mother had refrained from presenting to her particular persons in the company. All remarks heard from those who had been presented led to an almost certainty that the new Americans were a success.

"Do look at Estelle!" exclaimed Mrs. Hawthorne. "She's been dancing one dance after the other, and sits there now looking cool as a cuc.u.mber. I would have her life if it could make me into a bone like her. Miss Foss,"--she was diverted from the envious contemplation of Estelle,--"who is that lovely girl over there?"

"Which one? There are so many to-night!"

"The white one with the k.n.o.b of dark hair down in her neck. An Italian, I guess. Rather small. See who I mean? There. She's going to speak to the little fellow at the piano."

Leslie looked, but did not at once answer. The girl in white was indeed strangely, at this moment poignantly, lovely. Some intensity of repressed feeling made her cheek of a white-rose pallor, and her dark eyes, those spots of velvet shadow, mysteriously deep. She had gone where the piano stood in a bower of palm and bamboo, with Signor Ceccherelli seated before it, busy wiping the sweat of his brow. More than one had gone to him that evening to ask for some favorite piece.

She was perhaps just requesting him to play The Blue Danube, or La Manola or Bavardage, and it was merely the romantic way of her beauty to express a sense of doom. She spoke quietly to the pianist, who looked at her while she spoke and when she ceased made with his head a motion of a.s.sent. She turned and went from the room.

"It is my sister Brenda," said Leslie. "How singular you should not recognize her!"

"I've never met her, my dear. You don't remember. The time I came to tea she was in town taking a music lesson. The time I came to dinner she was in bed with a headache. Well, well, she's not a bit like the rest of you, is she? I took her for an Italian."

"She was only twelve when we came over here, it has somehow molded her.

I was seventeen; too old, I fancy, to change. Brenda is going back to America before long, to be with our aunt, father's sister, for whom Brenda was named. It was only decided a day or two ago, when we heard from some friends who are going and will take her under their wing. And if she goes there's no telling when she will come back, you see, because with every change of administration father may be recalled. And Italy has been her home so long, all her friends are here. It's no wonder she doesn't look exactly light of heart."

"No, poor child!"

There was a sympathetic silence, after which, "Who is that?" Mrs.

Hawthorne asked, to take their minds off the intrusive sadnesses of life. With her gaze across the room she counted, "One, two, three, four, to the left of the piano, with his hands behind him and a round gla.s.s in his eye."

Leslie looked over at a figure of whom it was natural to ask who that was, it so surely looked like Somebody--though Mrs. Hawthorne had very likely asked because, merely, in her eyes he was queer. It was an oldish man, dressed with marked elegance, white tie, white waistcoat, white flower at his lapel. The whole of worldly wisdom dwelt in his weary eye.

He had yellow and withered cheeks, black hair with a dash of white above the ears, and a mustache whose thickest part curved over his mouth like a black lacquer box-lid, while its long ends, stiff as thorns of a thorn-tree, projected on either side far beyond his face.

"His name is Balm de Breze, vicomte. He is by birth a Belgian, I think; the t.i.tle, however, is French. He has lived mostly in Paris, but now spends about half of his time here. He married a friend of ours, an American. There is Amabel, in ruby velvet, just inside the library door.

A good deal younger than he, yet they seem appropriately matched, somehow."

"She looks about as foreign as he does. Who's the one she's talking to, handsome, dark as night? Never saw such a dark skin before except on a cullud puss'n."

"I know. He might be an Arab, only he's very good Tuscan. It's Mr.

Landini,--Hunt and Landini."

"Ah, the bankers. They do my business, but I've never seen the heads before to-night."

Mrs. Hawthorne's eyes wandered, as if she said, "Whom else do I want to know about?" and Leslie made internal comment upon the fact that Mrs.

Hawthorne's interest was quickened by those individuals precisely whom they had withheld, for reasons, from presenting to her.

Mrs. Hawthorne suddenly pressed closer, and with a little chuckle grasped Leslie's knee, by this affectionate touch to make herself forgiven for the disrespect about to be shown.

"And who's Stickly-p.r.i.c.kly?"

Leslie had to laugh, too. Impossible not to know which one was meant of all the people in the direction of Mrs. Hawthorne's glance. He was leaning against the wall between two chairs deserted by the fair, looking off with a slightly mournful indifference at everything and at nothing. His mustache ended in upturned points, his beard was pointed, his hair stood up in little points. He gave the impression besides of one whose nervous temper put out porcupine shafts to keep you off.

"It's one of our very best friends, Mrs. Hawthorne. Dear old Gerald! Mr.

Fane. Shall I go get him and bring him over?"

"No, don't. I should be scared of him."

"Let me! His p.r.i.c.kles are harmless. He has heard us speak of you so much! See, he is looking over at us wistfully, in a way that plainly suggests our course. Here comes Charlie Hunt, who will keep you amused while I fetch Gerald; then we will go in together and have an ice."

Charlie Hunt, modern moth without fear or shyness, but with a great deal of caution, was indeed returning for the third or fourth time to Mrs.

Hawthorne's side, drawn by the sparkle of eyes and tresses and smiles and diamonds. Francesca had already described him that evening to another young lady as dancing attendance on the new American. He dropped into the seat vacated by Leslie, addressed Mrs. Hawthorne as if they had been friends for at least weeks, and made conversation joyfully easy by getting at once on to a playful footing.

Leslie meanwhile steered her course toward Gerald. The music had started up again, men were presenting themselves to maidens with their request for the favor.... Leslie threaded her way between the first on the floor. Her eyes were naturally turned toward the object of her search; some intention toward him was probably apparent in her look. As if he had not seen it, or as if, having seen it, he scented in her approach some conspiracy against his peace, Gerald in a moment during which her eye was not on him quietly vanished.

Missing him, Leslie looked about in some surprise, then entered the door by which inevitably he must have pa.s.sed. She gave a glance around the library; Gerald did not seem to be there. Mystified, she looked more carefully at the faces to be seen through the thin tobacco smoke. No, Gerald's was not among them. Gerald, acquainted with the house, knew the door, of course, of the kind frequent in Italian houses, the little door indistinguishable from the wall, by which one could leave the library, and after crossing the landing of the kitchen stairs, reach the dining-room. From the dining-room, then, one could come into the entrance hall, whence go upstairs, or out into the garden, or, as one pleased, back into the drawing-room. Leslie did not think the matter of sufficient importance to pursue the chase farther.

The dancing was suspended while the musician had sandwiches and gla.s.ses of a fragrant and delicious-looking but weak punch. The Fosses' waiter knew him well and fraternally attended to his wants.

The dining-room, though large, would not permit all the couples to enter at once, so ices and cakes were borne from the table by cavaliers to expectant ladies in the antechamber, on the stairs, and in the farther rooms.

The musician after eating to his satisfaction took the time for a cigarette, which he enjoyed, not in the library, but in cool and peaceful isolation on the top step of the kitchen stairs. Refreshed, he briskly went back to his piano, persuaded that the young people were sighing to see him there. With new vigor he struck up a march. The crowd in the dining-room thinned.

Mrs. Hawthorne and Miss Madison, with Charlie Hunt and Doctor Chandler, one of the Americans from the pension, lingered on in the corner where, with the migration of so many to the ball-room, all four had been able to find chairs. Mrs. Hawthorne, of the fair moon-face, was as a matter of course eating sweet stuff; Miss Madison, contrariwise, sipped a small cup of black coffee. Miss Madison, no need to say, had a neat jaw-bone to show--collarbones, too. She was not pretty, her features were hardly worth describing, but yet it was an attractive face, as merry as it was fundamentally shrewd, as sensible as it was sprightly. The frank, almost business-like manner of her setting out to have a good time at the party ensured her having at least a lively one, and her partners not finding it slow. She at once and impartially interested herself in the men brought up to her, and sought to interest them. Her flirtatiousness was, however, sedate--in its way, moral--not intended to have any result beyond the enlivenment of the hour.

Miss Madison had been finding exhilaration and delight this evening in dancing, and when presently the alluring strains of a waltz came floating to their ears, she looked at Chandler, and he in the same manner looked at her; whereupon she rose, as if words had been exchanged, took his arm, and they deserted for the ball-room. Charlie Hunt was left ensconced in an intimate nook alone with Mrs. Hawthorne.

But he had hardly a moment in which to enjoy the feeling of advantage this gave him before his cousin Francesca came looking for him. They were going, she said. Father was sleepy, and mother said they must go.

If he wanted a lift home, he must hurry up. Charlie had come with them, on the box near the driver, there being five already inside the landau.

Gallantry should perhaps have made him answer that rather than be dragged away at this moment he would walk. But gallantry was dumb.

Charlie was not fond of walking. It was a great convenience, an economy as well, being permitted to make use of his aunt's carriage.

Having delivered her message, Francesca had gone to put on her things, and Charlie, after expressions of regret over the inevitable, asked Mrs.