"You two conspiring as usual?" he said, with a smile, with the smile
which indicates a mind from which mirth has been absent for some time.
"Yes," said Howard; "we have been plotting the cotillon and very
properly arranging that the prize shall go to the wisest, the nicest,
and best-looking man in the room. I need not tell you his name?" He
spread his hand on his heart, and bowed with mock complacency. "And now
I will go and find Sir Stephen and get a cigarette before the battle
begins. _Au revoir_."
When he had gone, almost before the door had closed on him, Maude moved
closer to Stafford, and with a mixture of shyness and eagerness, put
her arm round his neck.
"How good of you to come so early!" she murmured, in the voice which
only a woman in love can use, and only when she is addressing the man
she loves. "You did not come to Richmond? Never mind! Stafford, you
know that I do not wish to hamper or bind you, do you not?--Are you
well?" she broke off, scanning his face earnestly, anxiously. "Quite
well," he responded. "Why do you ask, Maude?"
"I thought you looked tired, pale, that you have looked so for some
weeks," she said, her eyes seeking his.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"I am quite well. The hot weather makes one feel rather limp, I
suppose. At any rate, there is nothing else the matter with me but a
fit of laziness."
"As if you were ever lazy!" she said, with a smile.
"There is a large party to-night?" he said, presently.
She nodded.
"Yes: immense. The biggest thing we--I mean Sir Stephen--has done." Her
eyes fell for a moment. "You will dance with me to-night--twice,
Stafford?"
"As many times as you like, of course," he said. "But I shall not get
so many opportunities. You will be too much sought after, as usual."
She sighed.
"That is the one disadvantage of being engaged to you," she said.
"Twice, then. The second and the eleventh waltz."
He nodded, and stood with the same absent preoccupation in his eyes;
and she drew a little closer to him still; and as her eyes dwelt on his
face with love's hunger in them, she whispered: "You have not kissed me yet, Stafford."
He bent and kissed her, and her lips clung to his in that most awful of
appeals, the craving, the prayer from the soul that loves to the soul
that refuses love in return.