Colonel Audley bowed, and looked up to find the Lady Barbara’s brilliant gaze upon him. There was candid speculation in it, a tolerant smile just parted the lady’s lips. The Colonel returned the look, smiled, and said in his pleasant voice: ‘How do you do?’
‘How do you do?’ responded Barbara slowly, still looking at him.
Four
The Colonel, finding a gloved hand held out to him, took it in his, and bent his head to kiss it. Barbara looked down at it with a little bewilderment, as though she wondered why she had extended it.
‘Do please grant the Colonel one waltz!’ said the Prince, amusement quivering in his voice.
He moved away. The Comte de Lavisse said in English: ‘But how should that be possible, one asks oneself?’
‘May I have the honour?
’ said the Colonel.
‘But no!’ objected the Count. ‘This leads to an affair of the most sanguinary! I shall immediately send my friends to call upon you!’
‘We shall all send our friends to call upon you!’ declared an office of the 1st Guards. ‘Audley, this is piracy! Those wishing to dance with Lady Bab must present their credentials a full week beforehand!’
Captain Chalmers, of the 52nd, said: ‘Send him about his business, Bab! These staff officers are not at all the thing. Stick to the Light Division!’
‘These Light Division men, Lady Barbara,’ said Colonel Audley, ‘fancy themselves more important than the rest of the Army put together. I tell you in confidence, but you know it is a fact that they brag shockingly.’
‘An insult!’ declared Chalmers. ‘An insult from a staff officer! Bab, I appeal to your sense of justice!’
Barbara laughed, and, laying her hand on Colonel Audley’s arm, said: ‘Oh, the wishes of Royalty are tantamount to commands, gentlemen.’ She kissed her hand to her court, and walked back on to the floor with Colonel Audley.
He danced well, and she as though by instinct. Neither spoke for one or two turns, but presently Barbara raised her eyes to his face, and asked abruptly: ‘Why did you look at me so?’
He smiled down at her. ‘I don’t know how I looked. I have been wanting to dance with you all evening. Does every man say that to you?’
‘Yes,’ she replied nonchalantly.
‘I was afraid it must be so. I wish I might think of something to say to you which would interest you by its novelty.’
‘Oh! . . . Can you not?’
‘No. If I said the only thing I can think of to say you would find it abominably commonplace.’
‘Should I? What is it?’
‘I love you,’ replied the Colonel.
Momentary surprise, which caused her wonderful eyes to fly upwards to his again, gave place immediately to frank amusement. Her enchanting gurgle of laughter escaped her; she said: ‘You are wrong. The unexpected cannot be commonplace.’
‘Was it unexpected? I had not thought that possible.’
‘Certainly. At the end of a week I might expect you to say just that, but you have said it within ten minutes of making my acquaintance, and so have taken my breath away. Go on: I like to be surprised.’
‘That is all,’ said the Colonel.
Again she cast him that considering glance. ‘You are very clever, or very simple. Which is it?’
‘I haven’t a notion,’ replied the Colonel.
‘Ah! Is this strategy—from a staff officer?’
‘No, it is the truth.’