“What?”

“That there’s no chance for, Burnamy.  He’s taking his daughter out to marry her to a crowned head.”

XV.

It was this afternoon that the dance took place on the south promenade.  Everybody came and looked, and the circle around the waltzers was three or four deep.  Between the surrounding heads and shoulders, the hats of the young ladies wheeling and whirling, and the faces of the men who were wheeling and whirling them, rose and sank with the rhythm of their steps.  The space allotted to the dancing was walled to seaward with canvas, and was prettily treated with German, and American flags:  it was hard to go wrong with flags, Miss Triscoe said, securing herself under Mrs. March’s wing.

Where they stood they could see Burnamy’s face, flashing and flushing in the dance; at the end of the first piece he came to them, and remained talking and laughing till the music began again.

“Don’t you want to try it?” he asked abruptly of Miss Triscoe.

“Isn’t it rather—­public?” she asked back.

Mrs. March could feel the hand which the girl had put through her arm thrill with temptation; but Burnamy could not.

“Perhaps it is rather obvious,” he said, and he made a long glide over the deck to the feet of the pivotal girl, anticipating another young man who was rapidly advancing from the opposite quarter.  The next moment her hat and his face showed themselves in the necessary proximity to each other within the circle.

“How well she dances!” said Miss Triscoe.

“Do you think so?  She looks as if she had been wound up and set going.”

“She’s very graceful,” the girl persisted.

The day ended with an entertainment in the saloon for one of the marine charities which address themselves to the hearts and pockets of passengers on all steamers.  There were recitations in English and German, and songs from several people who had kindly consented, and ever more piano performance.  Most of those who took part were of the race gifted in art and finance; its children excelled in the music, and its fathers counted the gate-money during the last half of the programme, with an audible clinking of the silver on the table before them.

Miss Triscoe was with her father, and Mrs. March was herself chaperoned by Mr. Burnamy:  her husband had refused to come to the entertainment.  She hoped to leave Burnamy and Miss Triscoe together before the evening ended; but Miss Triscoe merely stopped with her father, in quitting the saloon, to laugh at some features of the entertainment, as people who take no part in such things do; Burnamy stood up to exchange some unimpassioned words with her, and then they said good-night.