The young
lady whom he now honoured with a request to dance did not think of his
title, nor of his condescension, nor of him. She declined with
characteristic indifference on the plea that she was already engaged,
and turning placed her hand on the arm of Sir Peregrine Maitland,
whose suddenly bewildered and enraptured heart, if it had never before
given its assent to the time-worn proposition that all is fair in love
as well as in war, certainly could not hesitate now. Perhaps the
triumphs of the ball-room are not less thrilling than those of the
battle-field. "Why were you so cruel to me a moment ago?" he murmured,
looking down into eyes that but too clearly reflected the happiness of
his own.
"For the same reason that I am kind to you now," she responded like a
flash.
He did not ask her the reason. Perhaps he was intuitively and
blissfully aware of it. Did ever maiden discover a more demurely
daring way of telling her lover that she loved him?
But now, caressed by little wafts of perfume, and half-dazed by the
blaze of lights and colours around and above them, they were drifting
as on a tide upon soft swelling waves of music.
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