He bowed, and with his half-humorous, half-melancholy smile, left her.
The first face he recognized was a pretty one. Miss Maggie Delafield was just turning away from a partner who was taking his congé, when she looked across the room and saw Steinmetz. He had only met her once, barely exchanging six words with her, and her frank, friendly bow was rather a surprise to him. She came toward him, holding out her hand with an open friendliness which this young lady was in the habit of bestowing upon men and women impartially—upon persons of either sex who happened to meet with her approval. She did not know what made her incline to like this man, neither did she seek to know. In a quiet, British way Miss Delafield was a creature of impulse. Her likes and dislikes were a matter of instinct, and, much as one respects the doctrine of charity, it is a question whether an instinctive dislike should be quashed by an exaggerated sense of neighborly duty. Steinmetz she liked, and there was an end to it.
“I was afraid you did not recognize me,” she said.
“My life has not so many pleasures that I can afford to forget one of them,” replied Steinmetz, in his somewhat old-fashioned courtesy. “But an old—buffer, shall I say?—hardly expects to be taken much notice of by young ladies at a ball.”
“It is not ten minutes since Paul assured me that you were the best dancer that Vienna ever produced,” said the girl, looking at him with bright, honest eyes.
Karl Steinmetz looked down at her, for he was a tall man when Paul Alexis was not near. His quiet gray eyes were almost affectionate. There was a sudden sympathy between these two, and sudden sympathies are the best.
“Will you give an old man a trial?” he asked. “They will laugh at you.”
She handed him her programme.
“Let them laugh!” she said.
He took the next dance, which happened to be vacant on her card. Almost immediately the music began, and they glided off together. Maggie began with the feeling that she was dancing with her own father, but this wore off before they had made much progress through the crowd, and gave way to the sensation that she had for partner the best dancer she had ever met, gray-haired, stout, and middle-aged.
“I wanted to speak to you,” she said.
“Ah!” Steinmetz answered. He was steering with infinite skill. In that room full of dancers no one touched Maggie’s elbow or the swing of her dress, and she, who knew what such things meant, smiled as she noted it.
“I have been asked to go and stay at Osterno,” she said. “Shall I go?”
“By whom?”
“By Paul.”
“Then go,” said Steinmetz, making one of the few mistakes of his life.
“You think so—you want me to go?”
“Ach! you must not put it like that. How well you dance—colossal! But it does not affect me—your going, fräulein.”
“Since you will be there?”
“Does that make a difference, my dear young lady?”
“Of course it does.”
“I wonder why.”
“So do I,” answered Maggie frankly. “I wonder why. I have been wondering why, ever since Paul asked me. If you had not been going I should have said ‘No’ at once.”
Karl Steinmetz laughed quietly.
“What do I represent?” he asked.
“Safety,” she replied at once.
She gave a queer little laugh and went on dancing.
“And Paul?” he said, after a little while.
“Strength,” replied Maggie promptly.
He looked down at her—a momentary glance of wonder. He was like a woman, inasmuch as he judged a person by a flicker of the eyelids—a glance, a silence—in preference to judging by the spoken word.
“Then with us both to take care of you, may we hope that you will brave the perils of Osterno? Ah—the music is stopping.”
“If I may assure my mother that there are no perils.”
Something took place beneath the gray mustache—a smile or a pursing up of the lips in doubt.
“Ah, I cannot go so far as that. You may assure Lady Delafield that I will protect you as I would my own daughter. If—well, if the good God in heaven had not had other uses for me I should have had a daughter of your age. Ach! the music has stopped. The music always does stop, Miss Delafield; that is the worst of it. Thank you for dancing with an old buffer.”
He took her back to her chaperon, bowed in his old-world way to both ladies, and left them.
“If I can help it, my very dear young friend,” he said to himself as he crossed the room, looking for Paul, “you will not go to Osterno.”
He found Paul talking to two men.
“You here!” said Paul, in surprise.
“Yes,” answered Steinmetz, shaking hands. “I gave Lady Fontain five guineas to let me in, and now I want a couple of chairs and a quiet corner, if the money includes such.”
“Come up into the gallery,” replied Paul.
A certain listlessness which had been his a moment before vanished when Paul recognized his friend. He led the way up the narrow stairs. In the gallery they found a few people—couples seeking, like themselves, a rare solitude.
“What news?” asked Paul, sitting down.
“Bad!” replied Steinmetz. “We have had the misfortune to make a dangerous enemy—Claude de Chauxville.”
“Claude de Chauxville,” repeated Paul.
“Yes. He wanted to marry your wife—for her money.”
Paul leaned forward and dragged at his great fair mustache. He was not a subtle man, analyzing his own thoughts. Had he been, he might have wondered why he was not more jealous in respect to Etta.
“Or,” went on Steinmetz, “it may have been—the other thing. It is a singular thing that many men incapable of a lifelong love, can conceive a lifelong hatred based on that love. Claude de Chauxville has hated me all his life; for very good reasons, no doubt. You are
