'Poor Sir William!' muttered Somerset.
'No,' said Paula, 'he is grand and historical.'
'That is hardly an orthodox notion for a Puritan,' said Somerset mischievously.
'I am not a Puritan,' insisted Paula.
The day turned to dusk, and the guests began going in relays to the dining-hall. When Somerset had taken in two or three ladies to whom he had been presented, and attended to their wants, which occupied him three-quarters of an hour, he returned again to the large tent, with a view to finding Paula and taking his leave. It was now brilliantly lighted up, and the musicians, who during daylight had been invisible behind the ash-tree, were ensconced at one end with their harps and violins. It reminded him that there was to be dancing. The tent had in the meantime half filled with a new set of young people who had come expressly for that pastime. Behind the girls gathered numbers of newly arrived young men with low shoulders and diminutive moustaches, who were evidently prepared for once to sacrifice themselves as partners.
Somerset felt something of a thrill at the sight. He was an infrequent dancer, and particularly unprepared for dancing at present; but to dance once with Paula Power he would give a year of his life. He looked round; but she was nowhere to be seen. The first set began; old and middle-aged people gathered from the different rooms to look on at the gyrations of their children, but Paula did not appear. When another dance or two had progressed, and an increase in the average age of the dancers was making itself perceptible, especially on the masculine side, Somerset was aroused by a whisper at his elbow-'You dance, I think? Miss Deverell is disengaged. She has not been asked once this evening.' The speaker was Paula.
Somerset looked at Miss Deverell--a sallow lady with black twinkling eyes, yellow costume, and gay laugh, who had been there all the afternoon--and said something about having thought of going home.
'Is that because I asked you to dance?' she murmured. 'There--she is appropriated.' A young gentleman had at that moment approached the uninviting Miss Deverell, claimed her hand and led her off.
'That's right,' said Somerset. 'I ought to leave room for younger men.'
'You need not say so. That bald-headed gentleman is forty-five. He does not think of younger men.'
'Have YOU a dance to spare for me?'
Her face grew stealthily redder in the candle-light. 'O!--I have no engagement at all--I have refused. I hardly feel at liberty to dance; it would be as well to leave that to my visitors.'