Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/279

 dress, and glancing toward the door. He knew lie was waiting for her to ask her to dance. How he would like to wring his handsome neck!

The boy returned immediately and said the lady was waiting in the parlour. He entered with a sense of fear and confusion.

She came to him with her bare arm extended, a dazzling vision of beauty. She was dressed in a creamy white crêpe ball gown, cut modestly decolleté over her full bust and gleaming shoulders, sleeveless, and held with tiny straps across the curve of the upper arm.

He was stunned. She smiled in triumph, conscious of her resistless power.

"Forgive me for my selfishness in keeping you here just a moment from the rest. I wished to see you first."

"What? to inspect like Mama, to see if I look all right?"

"No, with a mad desire to keep you as long as possible from the others."

Then she looked up at him and said slowly and softly,

"Would it please you very much if I were not to dance to-night?"

"I wouldn't dare ask so selfish a thing of you. It is with you a simple habit of polite society, and you enjoy it as a child does play. I understand that, and yet if you do not dance to-night, I feel as though I would crawl round this world on my hands and knees for you if you would ask it. There are men waiting for you in that ball room whom I hate."

She looked at him timidly as though she were afraid he was about to say too much and replied,

"Then I will not dance to-night. I'll just preside over the ball and let Helen be the queen."

"Words have no power to convey my gratitude. I count all my little triumphs in life nothing to this. You