By this time, as was natural, Hester began to think herself a monster of folly and unkindness, and to feel that she was ready to sink through the floor with shame.
“I did not mean to be cross,” she said. “I thought—that is, I had been looking—that is—”
Here she stopped, feeling herself get deeper and deeper into difficulty. Her countenance changed from the girlish freshness of complexion, which everybody admired, into a burning red; her eyelids unable to keep up, her heart beating as if it would burst through silk slip, and tarlatan bouillonée, and all—
“Come, let us have this dance. I like the music,” said Edward, drawing her hand suddenly through his arm.
“But I am engaged.”
“Oh, never mind, if you are engaged. You were engaged to me before ever you came,” he said, lightly, and drew her into the whirl. Hester was at the age (in society), when, to throw over a partner, looks like the guiltiest treachery. She could not take any pleasure in the dance, for thought of it.
“I must go and ask his pardon. I am sure I am very sorry. I did not intend to be so false; and there he is, poor man, not dancing.”
These words Hester said breathless over the shoulder of the enterprising intruder, who had carried her off under the victim’s eyes.
“Poor man!” Edward echoed, with a laugh. “I am glad he has nobody to dance with. What right had he to engage you? and you regret him; and you don’t want me.”
Here Hester rebuked her cousin.
“You have no right to say so. I might want—I mean I might like very well to dance with you when you condescended to ask me; but not to be run away with, without a word, and made to do a false thing. False things are what I hate.”
“You say that with such meaning. You must be thinking of more than a dance. Am I one of the false things you hate?”
“I do not hate you,” said Hester, as they came to a pause, looking doubtfully into his face; “but I do not think you are very true.”
“You mean I don’t blurt out everything I mean, and am capable now and then of keeping something to myself. I can keep my own counsel—not like that fellow there,” Edward permitted himself to say: which was a mistake; for Hester looked up and saw the gaze of honest Harry dwelling upon her with some regret, and much tenderness, and was touched at once with sympathy and indignation.
“If you mean Harry, no one could ever doubt him,” said Hester, in the warmth of her compunction. “If he is your friend, he is always your friend. He is not afraid of what anyone says.”
“Ah, Hester, you are always harping on that string,” said Edward. “I know what you mean; but can’t you understand the position I am in, and understand me? Don’t you know I am in bondage? I cannot say my soul is my own. I dare not think nor feel but as I am told. If I were to follow my own heart without disguise, I think it would be my ruin. We will not name any names, but you know. And I know what you think about that big stupid there, but you are mistaken. It is not that his heart is more true. It is that he has not brains enough to see what is liked and what is not liked. He is not even sympathetic enough. He does what he likes, and never considers if it is good for him or not.”
“Sympathetic!” cried Hester. “He is sympathetic with me. When he sees me lonely and neglected he comes and stands beside me. If he cannot do more, he does do that. I don’t pretend to say that he is very amusing,” she continued, with a laugh, “but he does what he can. He stands by me. Oh! failing other things that are better, I like that. Rather than being sympathetic with Catherine, I like him to sympathise with me.”
“There is no question of names,” said Edward, “We must not get personal. But I am glad you find Harry amusing. I never heard that he was so before. He is standing by Ellen now; that’s what he’s here for. They will come to grief, these young people. They are beginning a great deal too fast. You know young Merridew, or old Merridew either, can never keep up this. Ellen ought to know better. But Harry will have scope for this great accomplishment that you appreciate so highly. He will have to stand by his sister.”
“And he will,” Hester said.
She scarcely thought of the dancing, so much did this conversation—so unlike a conversation to be carried on in the whirl of a waltz—occupy her. It occurred to her now, as breath failed her, to remember how in all the accounts of a first ball she had ever read, the heroine had felt all other sentiments melt away in the rapturous pleasure of dancing with the man of her heart. Novels were all Hester’s experience. She remembered this, and it gave her a half comic, half miserable sensation to realise that she was not thinking about the dancing at all. She was carrying on her duel with Edward. There was always a warm sense of gratification in that—a stirring up of all her faculties. She liked to go on carrying it a step further, defying and puzzling him, and wondering on his side how much he meant, how much that he left to be inferred, was true. The heroine in a novel is generally the point of everybody’s admiration in the ballroom, and to look at the perfection of the waltz which she and her lover enjoy so deeply,
