“Thank you, sir,” she said immediately. “I needn’t give you any more trouble. I’m sorry you’ve had such an unlucky partner.”

“That’s very ill-natured of you,” said Godfrey, standing by her without any sign of intended departure, “to be sorry you’ve danced with me.”

“Oh no, sir, I don’t mean to say what’s ill-natured at all,” said Nancy, looking distractingly prim and pretty. “When gentlemen have so many pleasures, one dance can matter but very little.”

“You know that isn’t true. You know one dance with you matters to me more than all the other pleasures in the world.”

It was a long, long while since Godfrey had said anything so direct as that, and Nancy was startled. But her instinctive dignity and repugnance to any show of emotion made her sit perfectly still, and only throw a little more decision into her voice as she said,—

“No, indeed, Mr. Godfrey, that’s not known to me, and I have very good reasons for thinking different. But if it’s true I don’t wish to hear it.”

“Would you never forgive me then, Nancy—never think well of me, let what would happen? Would you never think the present made amends for the past? Not if I turned a good fellow, and gave up everything you didn’t like?”

Godfrey was half conscious that this sudden opportunity of speaking to Nancy alone had driven him beside himself; but blind feeling had got the mastery of his tongue. Nancy really felt much agitated by the possibility Godfrey’s words suggested, but this very pressure of emotion that she was in danger of finding too strong for her roused all her power of self-command.

“I should be glad to see a good change in anybody, Mr. Godfrey,” she answered, with the slightest discernible difference of tone, “but it ’ud be better if no change was wanted.”

“You’re very hard-hearted, Nancy,” said Godfrey pettishly. “You might encourage me to be a better fellow. I’m very miserable. But you’ve no feeling.”

“I think those have the least feeling that act wrong to begin with,” said Nancy, sending out a flash in spite of herself. Godfrey was delighted with that little flash, and would have liked to go on and make her quarrel with him; Nancy was so exasperatingly quiet and firm. But she was not indifferent to him yet.

The entrance of Priscilla, bustling forward and saying, “Dear heart alive, child, let us look at this gown,” cut off Godfrey’s hopes of a quarrel.

“I suppose I must go now,” he said to Priscilla.

“It’s no matter to me whether you go or stay,” said that frank lady, searching for something in her pocket with a preoccupied brow.

“Do you want me to go?” said Godfrey, looking at Nancy, who was now standing up by Priscilla’s order.

“As you like,” said Nancy, trying to recover all her former coldness, and looking down carefully at the hem of her gown.

“Then I like to stay,” said Godfrey, with a reckless determination to get as much of this joy as he could to-night and think nothing of the morrow.