'What is the worst of it?'
'I'm pretty nigh ashamed of myself. Yes, I am.' And now Ruby burst out into tears. 'Because I wouldn't have John Crumb, I didn't mean to be a bad girl. Nor yet I won't. But what'll I do, if everybody turns against me? Aunt won't go on for ever in this way. She said last night that--'
'Bother what she says!' Felix was not at all anxious to hear what aunt Pipkin might have to say upon such an occasion.
'She's right too. Of course she knows there's somebody. She ain't such a fool as to think that I'm out at these hours to sing psalms with a lot of young women. She says that whoever it is ought to speak out his mind. There;--that's what she says. And she's right. A girl has to mind herself, though she's ever so fond of a young man.'
Sir Felix sucked his cigar and then took a long drink of brandy and water. Having emptied the beaker before him, he rapped, for the waiter and called for another. He intended to avoid the necessity of making any direct reply to Ruby's importunities. He was going to New York very shortly, and looked on his journey thither as an horizon in his future beyond which it was unnecessary to speculate as to any farther distance. He had not troubled himself to think how it might be with Ruby when he was gone. He had not even considered whether he would or would not tell her that he was going, before he started. It was not his fault that she had come up to London. She was an 'awfully jolly girl,' and he liked the feeling of the intrigue better, perhaps, than the girl herself. But he assured himself that he wasn't going to give himself any 'd---d trouble.' The idea of John Crumb coming up to London in his wrath had never occurred to him,--or he would probably have hurried on his journey to New York instead of delaying it, as he was doing now. 'Let's go in, and have a dance,' he said.
Ruby was very fond of dancing,--perhaps liked it better than anything in the world. It was heaven to her to be spinning round the big room with her lover's arm tight round her waist, with one hand in his and her other hanging over his back. She loved the music, and loved the motion. Her ear was good, and her strength was great, and she never lacked breath. She could spin along and dance a whole room down, and feel at the time that the world could have nothing to give better worth having than that;--and such moments were too precious to be lost. She went and danced, resolving as she did so that she would have some answer to her question before she left her lover on that night.