Page:Alice Lauder.pdf/207

enjoying herself, conscious that she was playing a part, and playing it with great spirit and refinement. When Cinderella danced so triumphantly at the fairy ball, it must have been a great comfort to her to know that the gaze of her relations was upon her; and on this occasion Alice was well aware that the eyes of one person at least, who had known her in her former primitive and chrysalis state—in her old frocks, and big boots, and misguided ideas—were fixed upon her, as now, in her brightest mood, admired, surrounded, dressed in silk attire, and sparkling with the diamond stars which Clare insisted on lending her, she floated over the polished cedar floor with

This person, however, showed no empressement in seeking her out; he seemed to have relapsed into the lazy fainéant manner of the London man, spoilt by attention, and too indolent even to dance with the pretty colonial girls—the conventional globe-trotter’s manner. He sauntered up to Miss Lauder early in the evening, and carelessly, as she thought, asked her for a dance. “I’m afraid I haven't got one left till quite the end. The twenty-fourth, if you like ; but perhaps I shan’t be here at that time.”