Honor of Thieves
9781465665171
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Miss Rivers picked out the name of Patrick Onslow in the society paper which lay upon her knee, and drew idle circles round it with a pink ball-pencil. Fairfax tugged at his mustache, and returned to the subject which they had been discussing. “The fellow has,” said Fairfax, “a genial insolence of manner which seems rather taking with some people. But I confess I shouldn’t have thought him the man you would have cared to see twice, Amy.” “You’re prejudiced, obviously; and I’ve a good mind to say maliciously prejudiced. I don’t know how much you saw of him, because I can’t be invited to a Wanderers’ Club dinner; you don’t know how much I saw of him, because you missed some distant train and didn’t come here to the ball last night. But I’ll tell you: I saw all I could. He’s perfectly and entirely charming. He’s been everywhere, done everything, and he isn’t a bit blasé.” “I heard,” said Fairfax, “that Mrs. Shelf was lionizing Onslow round last night as the great traveler. Does he belong to the advertising variety of globe-trotter? Did he sit in a side room and hold a small audience spellbound with a selection from his adventures?” Miss Rivers shrugged her shoulders. “Not he. But you know what Mrs. Shelf is when she gets any show person at one of her functions. The poor man had to stand it for a while, because she held on to him as though he might have been her fan. But he escaped as soon as he decently could by saying he wanted to dance. He asked me to give him the fourth waltz. I did it out of sheer pity, because I saw Mrs. Shelf’s thumbscrews were making him writhe.” “’Shows how little a man knows about the girl he’s engaged to. Now, I had always imagined that, having the pick of the men, you invariably wrote down the best dancers, and never saddled yourself with a stranger who was a very possible duffer.” Amy Rivers laughed. “That’s generalizing. But it was different last night, because, so to speak, I’m a member of the household here. A ward counts as a sort of niece, doesn’t she? Or between that and an adopted daughter? But, anyway, it was out of sheer pity for Mr. Onslow in the first instance, and it was with distinct qualms that I let him take me down to dance. I quite intended, after half a round, to say the room was too crowded, and go and sit somewhere. That is to say, I made up my mind to do this when he asked me. However, when I dropped my fingers on his arm to go down-stairs, I had my doubts. You know after two seasons one gets instinctively to know by the first touch how a man will dance. And when he put his arm around me, and we moved to the music, I felt like going on forever. Waltzing is hard just now, because it’s in a transition state between two styles; but his dancing was something to dream about. We started off with the newest quick waltz. Hamilton, it was just lovely! He was so perfect that just for experiment I altered my step—by degrees, you know. Automatically, and without anything being seen, he changed too; and we were dancing the old slow glide before I knew. And his steering was perfect. In that whirling, teeming, tangled mob he never bumped me once. I gave him two more waltzes, and cut another couple in his favor.”
