The Westcotes | Page 8

Frenchwoman, and that gives me a kind of--sympathy, shall we say?
Moreover, I know what I like."
Dorothea, accustomed to regard her brother as a demigod, caught
herself blushing for him. She was angry with herself. She caught M.
Raoul's murmur, "Heaven distributes to us our talents, Monsieur," and
was angry with him, understanding and deprecating the raillery beneath
his perfectly correct attitude. He kept this attitude to the end. When the
time came for parting, he bent over her hand and whispered again:
"But it was kind of Mademoiselle not to report me."
She heard. It set up a secret understanding between them, which she
resented. There was nothing to say, again; yet she had found no way of
rebuking him, she was angry with herself all the way home.
CHAPTER III
A BALL, A SNOWSTORM, AND A SNOWBALL
Axcester's December Ball was a social event of importance in South
Somerset. At once formal and familiar--familiar, since nine-tenths of
the company dwelt close enough together to be on visiting terms--it
nicely preluded the domestic festivities of Christmas, and the more
public ones which began with the New Year and culminated in the
great County Balls at Taunton and Bath. Nor were the families around
Axcester jaded with dancing, as those in the neighbourhood of Bath,
for example; but discussed dresses and the prospects of the Ball for
some weeks beforehand, and, when the day came, ordered out the
chariot or barouche in defiance of any ordinary weather.
The weather since Dorothea's visit to the Orange Room had included a
frost, a fall of snow with a partial thaw, and a second and much severer
frost; and by Wednesday afternoon the hill below Bayfield wore a hard
and slippery glaze. Endymion, however, had seen to the roughing of the
horses. Thin powdery snow began to fall as the Bayfield barouche
rolled past the gates into the high road; and Narcissus, who considered

himself a weather-prophet, foretold a thaw before morning. Unless the
weather grew worse, the party would drive back to Bayfield; but the old
caretaker in the Town House had orders to light fires there and prepare
the bedrooms, and on the chance of being detained. Dorothea had
brought her maid Polly.
In spite of her previous visit, the Orange Room gave her a shock of
delight and wonder. The litter had vanished, the hangings were in place;
fresh orange-coloured curtains divided the dancing-floor from the
recess beneath the gallery, and this had been furnished as a
withdrawing-room, with rugs, settees, groups of green foliage plants,
and candles, the light of which shone through shades of yellow paper.
The prisoners, too, had adorned with varicoloured paperwork the
candelabra, girandoles and mirrors which drew twinkles from the long
waxed floor, and softened whatever might have been garish in the
decorations. Certainly the panels took a new beauty, a luminous
delicacy, in their artificial rays; and Dorothea, when, after much
greeting and hand-shaking, she joined one of the groups inspecting
them, felt a sort of proprietary pleasure in the praises she heard.
Had she known it, she too was looking her best tonight--in an old-
maidish fashion, be it understood. She wore a gown of ashen-grey
muslin, edged with swansdown, and tied with sash and shoulder-knots
of a flame-hued ribbon which had taken her fancy at Bath in the
autumn. Her sandal-shoes, stockings, gloves, cap--she had worn caps
for six or seven years now,--even her fan, were of the same
ash-coloured grey.
Dorothea knew how to dress. She also knew how to dance. The music
made her heart beat faster, and she never entered a ball-room without a
sense of happy expectancy. Poor lady! she never left but she carried
home heart-sickness, weariness, and a discontent of which she purged
her soul, on her knees, before lying down to sleep. She had a contrite
spirit; she knew that her lot was a fortunate one; but she envied her
maid Polly her good looks at times. With Polly's face, she might have
dancing to her heart's content. Usually she dropped some tears on her
pillow after a night's gaiety.

At Bath, at Taunton, at Axcester, it had always been the same, and with
time she had learnt to set her hopes low and steel her heart early to their
inevitable disappointment. So tonight she took her seat against the wall
and watched while the first three _contre-danses_ went by without
bringing her a partner. For the fourth--the "Soldier's joy"-- she was
claimed by an awkward schoolboy, home for the holidays; whether out
of duty or obeying the law of Nature by which shy youths are attracted
to middle-aged partners, she could not tell, nor did she ask herself, but
danced the dance and enjoyed it more than her cavalier was ever likely
to guess.