She regretted that he
was too late. He looked disappointed, but ventured to name the next
one. She was sorry, but it was impossible. Had she room for him
anywhere at all on her list? She shook her head prettily but
inexorably. The handsomest coquette and the plainest school-ma'am have
this in common, that they detest and punish tardiness. The young man
was overpowered by his sense of loss. It was small comfort to stand
and look at the beautiful girl. When the gates of paradise are closed
against one it matters little whether they are made of gold or of
iron. Inwardly he bestowed some very hard names upon himself for
imagining that that peerless creature would be allowed to await a
willing wall-flower his languidly deferred appearance.
Again those heavenly strains rose and throbbed upon the air. It was
maddening. The keenness of his disappointment gave his face an
intensity of ardent expression that certainly did not detract from its
charm in the eyes of the girl who at that instant glanced up into it.
The next moment he was pressed aside--very decorously, very
courteously, even apologetically pushed aside, but still compelled by
an insinuating patrician hand to make room for its owner, a gentleman
whose extremely lofty title had already drawn the homage of a hundred
admiring pairs of eyes upon him, and whose prevailing expression was a
haughty consciousness of accustomed and assumed success.
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