Jane sat there looking so demure you would have thought mischief could not live within a league of her, but those very demure girls are nearly always dangerous.  She said, oh! so innocently: 

“Would you like to dance?  If so, I will play.”  And she reached for her lute, which was by her side.

“Yes, that will be delightful.  Master Brandon, will you dance with me?” asked the princess, with a saucy little laugh, her invitation meaning so much more to three of us than to Brandon.  Jane and I joined in the laugh, and when Mary clapped her hands that set Brandon off, too, for he thought it the quaintest, prettiest little gesture in the world, and was all unconscious that our laugh was at his expense.

Brandon did not answer Mary’s invitation—­the fit of laughter had probably put it out of his mind—­so she, evidently anxious to win or lose her wager at once, again asked him if he danced.

“Oh, pardon me.  Of course.  Thank you.”  And he was on his feet beside her chair in an instant ready for the dance.  This time the girl’s laugh, though equally merry, had another tone, for she knew she had lost.

Out they stepped upon the polished floor, he holding her hand in his, awaiting the pause in the music to take the step.  I shall never forget the sight of those two standing there together—­Mary, dark-eyed and glowing; Brandon, almost rosy, with eyes that held the color of a deep spring sky, and a wealth of flowing curls crowning his six feet of perfect manhood, strong and vigorous as a young lion.  Mary, full of beauty-curves and graces, a veritable Venus in her teens, and Brandon, an Apollo, with a touch of Hercules, were a complement each to the other that would surely make a perfect one.

When the music started, off they went, heel and toe, bow and courtesy, a step forward and a step back, in perfect time and rhythm—­a poem of human motion.  Could Brandon dance?  The princess had her answer in the first ten steps.  Nothing could be more graceful than Brandon’s dancing, unless it were Mary’s.  Her slightest movement was grace itself.  When she would throw herself backward in thrusting out her toe, and then swing forward with her head a little to one side, her uplifted arm undulating like the white neck of a swan,—­for her sleeve, which was slit to the shoulder, fell back and left it bare,—­she was a sight worth a long journey to see.  And when she looked up to Brandon with a laugh in her brown eyes, and a curving smile just parting her full, red lips, that a man would give his very luck to—­but I had better stop.

“Was there ever a goodlier couple?” I asked Jane, by whose side I sat.