"Thank you," said Mount Dunstan. "One will have it to remember." And his
tone was slightly sardonic.
"Yes," Betty acquiesced politely.
"Oh, not you. Only I. I have never waltzed before."
Betty turned to look at him curiously.
"Under circumstances such as these," he explained. "I learned to dance
at a particularly hideous boys' school in France. I abhorred it. And
the trend of my life has made it quite easy for me to keep my
twelve-year-old vow that I would never dance after I left the place,
unless I WANTED to do it, and that, especially, nothing should make
me waltz until certain agreeable conditions were fulfilled. Waltzing I
approved of--out of hideous schools. I was a pig-headed, objectionable
child. I detested myself even, then."
Betty's composure returned to her.
"I am trusting," she remarked, "that I may secretly regard myself as
one of the agreeable conditions to be fulfilled. Do not dispel my hopes
roughly."
"I will not," he answered. "You are, in fact, several of them."
"One breathes with much greater freedom," she responded.
This sort of cool nonsense was safe. It dispelled feelings of tenseness,
and carried them to the place where Sir Nigel and Lady Anstruthers
awaited them.
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