“They treated me as if I were a piece of bunting or a flower in a pot,” she said.  “They left me alone in the dressing-room.  No one spoke to me, though they must have known who I was.  They know, all of them, that I am the Governor’s daughter.”

With a start he brought himself back from the secret places.  “But I thought you carried your head very high,” he answered, “and you did not appear to lack partners.”  Some small ironic demon that seemed to dwell in his brain and yet to have no part in his real thought, moved him to add indiscreetly:  “I thought you danced every dance with Julius Gershom.  That’s the name of that dark fellow who’s a politician of doubtful cast, isn’t it?”

She made a petulant gesture, and the red wings in her hat vibrated like the wings of a bird in flight.  There flashed though his mind while he watched her the memory of a cardinal he had seen in a cedar tree against the snow-covered landscape.  Strange that he could never get away from the thought of a bird when he looked at her.

“Oh, Julius Gershom!  I despise him!”

She shivered, and he asked with a sympathy he had not displayed for mental discomforts:  “Aren’t you dreadfully chilled?  This kind of thing is a risk, you know.  You might catch influenza—­or anything.”

“Yes, I might, if there is any about,” she replied tartly, and he saw with relief that her petulance had faded to dull indifference.  “I was obliged to dance with somebody,” she resumed after a minute, “I couldn’t sit against the wall the whole evening, could I?  And nobody else asked me,—­but I don’t like him any the better for that.”

“And your father?  Does he dislike him also?” he asked.

“How can one tell?  He says he is useful.”  There was a playful tenderness in her voice.

“Useful?  You mean in politics?”

She laughed.  “How else in the world can any one be useful to Father?  It must be freezing.”

“No, it is melting; but it is too cold to play about out of doors.”

“Your teeth are chattering!” she rejoined with scornful merriment.

“They are not,” he retorted indignantly.  “I am as comfortable as you are.”

“Well, I’m not comfortable at all.  Something—­I don’t know what it was—­happened to my ankle.  I think I twisted it when I fell.”

“And all this time you haven’t said a word.  We’ve talked about nothing while you must have been in pain.”

She shook her head as if his new solicitude irritated her, and a quiver of pain—­or was it amusement?—­crossed her lips.  “It isn’t the first time I’ve had to grit my teeth and bear things—­but it’s getting worse instead of better all the time, and I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to help me up the hill.  I was waiting until I thought I could manage it by myself.”