The sparkling Diana said to Lord Larrian, ’You really decline to make any of us proud women by dancing to-night?’

The General answered:  ‘I might do it on two stilts; I can’t on one.’  He touched his veteran leg.

‘But surely,’ said she, ’there’s always an inspiration coming to it from its partner in motion, if one of them takes the step.’

He signified a woeful negative.  ’My dear young lady, you say dark things to grey hairs!’

She rejoined:  ’If we were over in England, and you fixed on me the stigma of saying dark things, I should never speak without being thought obscure.’

‘It’s because you flash too brightly for them.’

’I think it is rather the reminiscence of the tooth that received a stone when it expected candy.’

Again the General laughed; he looked pleased and warmed.  ’Yes, that ’s their way, that ‘s their way!’ and he repeated her words to himself, diminishing their importance as he stamped them on his memory, but so heartily admiring the lovely speaker, that he considered her wit an honour to the old country, and told her so.  Irish prevailed up to boiling-point.

Lady Dunstane, not less gratified, glanced up at Mr. Redworth, whose brows bore the knot of perplexity over a strong stare.  He, too, stamped the words on his memory, to see subsequently whether they had a vestige of meaning.  Terrifically precocious, he thought her.  Lady Dunstane, in her quick sympathy with her friend, read the adverse mind in his face.  And her reading of the mind was right, wrong altogether her deduction of the corresponding sentiment.

Music was resumed to confuse the hearing of the eavesdroppers.

They beheld a quaint spectacle:  a gentleman, obviously an Englishman, approached, with the evident intention of reminding the Beauty of the night of her engagement to him, and claiming her, as it were, in the lion’s jaws.  He advanced a foot, withdrew it, advanced, withdrew; eager for his prize, not over-enterprising; in awe of the illustrious General she entertained—­presumeably quite unaware of the pretender’s presence; whereupon a voice was heard:  ’Oh! if it was minuetting you meant before the lady, I’d never have disputed your right to perform, sir.’  For it seemed that there were two claimants in the field, an Irishman and an Englishman; and the former, having a livelier sense of the situation, hung aloof in waiting for her eye; the latter directed himself to strike bluntly at his prey; and he continued minuetting, now rapidly blinking, flushed, angry, conscious of awkwardness and a tangle, incapable of extrication.  He began to blink horribly under the raillery of his rival.  The General observed him, but as an object remote and minute, a fly or gnat.  The face of the brilliant Diana was entirely devoted to him she amused.

Lady Dunstane had the faint lines of a decorous laugh on her lips, as she said:  ’How odd it is that our men show to such disadvantage in a Ball-room.  I have seen them in danger, and there they shine first of any, and one is proud of them.  They should always be facing the elements or in action.’  She glanced at the minuet, which had become a petrified figure, still palpitating, bent forward, an interrogative reminder.