To herself Betty was saying:  “That was a strange thing he asked me.  It is curious that we say so little.  I should never know much about him.  I have no intelligence where he is concerned—­only a strong, stupid feeling, which is not like a feeling of my own.  I am no longer Betty Vanderpoel—­and I wish to go on dancing with him—­on and on—­to the last note, as he said.”

She felt a little hot wave run over her cheek uncomfortably, and the next instant the big arm tightened its clasp of her—­for just one second—­not more than one.  She did not know that he, himself, had seen the sudden ripple of red colour, and that the equally sudden contraction of the arm had been as unexpected to him and as involuntary as the quick wave itself.  It had horrified and made him angry.  He looked the next instant entirely stiff and cold.

“He did not know it happened,” Betty resolved.

“The music is going to stop,” said Mount Dunstan.  “I know the waltz.  We can get once round the room again before the final chord.  It was to be the last note—­the very last,” but he said it quite rigidly, and Betty laughed.

“Quite the last,” she answered.

The music hastened a little, and their gliding whirl became more rapid—­a little faster—­a little faster still—­a running sweep of notes, a big, terminating harmony, and the thing was over.

“Thank you,” said Mount Dunstan.  “One will have it to remember.”  And his tone was slightly sardonic.

“Yes,” Betty acquiesced politely.

“Oh, not you.  Only I. I have never waltzed before.”

Betty turned to look at him curiously.

“Under circumstances such as these,” he explained.  “I learned to dance at a particularly hideous boys’ school in France.  I abhorred it.  And the trend of my life has made it quite easy for me to keep my twelve-year-old vow that I would never dance after I left the place, unless I wanted to do it, and that, especially, nothing should make me waltz until certain agreeable conditions were fulfilled.  Waltzing I approved of—­out of hideous schools.  I was a pig-headed, objectionable child.  I detested myself even, then.”

Betty’s composure returned to her.

“I am trusting,” she remarked, “that I may secretly regard myself as one of the agreeable conditions to be fulfilled.  Do not dispel my hopes roughly.”

“I will not,” he answered.  “You are, in fact, several of them.”

“One breathes with much greater freedom,” she responded.

This sort of cool nonsense was safe.  It dispelled feelings of tenseness, and carried them to the place where Sir Nigel and Lady Anstruthers awaited them.  A slight stir was beginning to be felt throughout the ballroom.  The royal guest was retiring, and soon the rest began to melt away.  The Anstruthers, who had a long return drive before them, were among those who went first.

When Lady Anstruthers and her sister returned from the cloak room, they found Sir Nigel standing near Mount Dunstan, who was going also, and talking to him in an amiably detached manner.  Mount Dunstan, himself, did not look amiable, or seem to be saying much, but Sir Nigel showed no signs of being disturbed.