Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/134

122 admitted, a trifle flushed; and they contented themselves with standing in the doorway for a few moments looking on. Nevertheless this brief appearance always caused a flutter of uneasiness. Suppose one of them should leave the doorway and cross the floor directly at one, and ask one to dance! Horrors! What would one say? and what would mamma say afterward! The idea was shivery, exciting, perhaps not wholly unpleasant.

It was not until nearly ten o'clock, however, that Herbert Corbell appeared. His dark face was not in the least flushed, and his bright, quick eye was thoroughly in command. Quite coolly he ran it over the room. Then he fulfilled the secret fear-hope of the fluttered; he proceeded in the most leisurely fashion across the room straight toward the spot where sat Myra Welch. Myra from the ambush of her long sleepy lashes saw him coming, but pretended not to, and began suddenly to lavish the most unusual attention on her awkward campanion. For, by chance, Myra was doing a duty dance with John Maynard, whose callow attempts bored her extremely. Therefore she had, when the music stopped, steered him over next Mrs. Stanley, who was chaperoning both Dora and herself.

Mrs. Stanley saw the approach of Corbell with a rising of the hackles. The uncompromising old lady disapproved of Corbell in every way. She did not like his waxed moustache, which she considered vaguely villainous and certainly affected; she did not like the direct, faintly quizzical concealed amusement of his glance; she did not like his silly superior accent nor his broad A's; she did not like his clothes, which she thought of as "dudish"; she thoroughly disapproved of all his actions and expected the worst. Instantly she visualized his dancing with Myra, and then walking out on the veranda or into the grounds with her, and not bringing her back until all hours, and that soft fool Myra not knowing any better than to permit it—flirtatious, soft, little fool!—and she responsible to Mrs. Welch—no use trying to drop a hint to the young people of these days; they had no idea whatever of propriety or obedience. What they needed was a good spanking—all these thoughts, and others similar, went through Mrs. Stanley's head as Corbell picked his way across the floor. They had the effect of making her look even