Bellston showed his gratification by one of his angry-pleasant flushes—­he had hardly dared to ask for what she proffered freely; and having requested Nicholas to take the dairyman’s daughter, led Christine to her place, Long promptly stepping up second with his charge.  There were grim silent depths in Nic’s character; a small deedy spark in his eye, as it caught Christine’s, was all that showed his consciousness of her.  Then the fiddlers began—­the celebrated Mellstock fiddlers who, given free stripping, could play from sunset to dawn without turning a hair.  The couples wheeled and swung, Nicholas taking Christine’s hand in the course of business with the figure, when she waited for him to give it a little squeeze; but he did not.

Christine had the greatest difficulty in steering her partner through the maze, on account of his self-will, and when at last they reached the bottom of the long line, she was breathless with her hard labour..  Resting here, she watched Nic and his lady; and, though she had decidedly cooled off in these later months, began to admire him anew.  Nobody knew these dances like him, after all, or could do anything of this sort so well.  His performance with the dairyman’s daughter so won upon her, that when ‘Speed the Plough’ was over she contrived to speak to him.

‘Nic, you are to dance with me next time.’

He said he would, and presently asked her in a formal public manner, lifting his hat gallantly.  She showed a little backwardness, which he quite understood, and allowed him to lead her to the top, a row of enormous length appearing below them as if by magic as soon as they had taken their places.  Truly the Squire was right when he said that they only wanted starting.

‘What is it to be?’ whispered Nicholas.

She turned to the band.  ‘The Honeymoon,’ she said.

And then they trod the delightful last-century measure of that name, which if it had been ever danced better, was never danced with more zest.  The perfect responsiveness which their tender acquaintance threw into the motions of Nicholas and his partner lent to their gyrations the fine adjustment of two interacting parts of a single machine.  The excitement of the movement carried Christine back to the time—­the unreflecting passionate time, about two years before—­when she and Nic had been incipient lovers only; and it made her forget the carking anxieties, the vision of social breakers ahead, that had begun to take the gilding off her position now.  Nicholas, on his part, had never ceased to be a lover; no personal worries had as yet made him conscious of any staleness, flatness, or unprofitableness in his admiration of Christine.

‘Not quite so wildly, Nic,’ she whispered.  ’I don’t object personally; but they’ll notice us.  How came you here?’

‘I heard that you had driven over; and I set out—­on purpose for this.’

‘What—­you have walked?’