This we danced in a very interesting fashion,
sometimes two and two, sometimes three and two, or four couple and four
couple, and then all together, which vastly entertained the spectators.
In the final melee I had lost my lady to Mr. De Lancey, who now carried
her off, leaving me with a willowy maid, whose partner came to claim
her soon.

The ball now being opened, I moved a minuet with Lady Coleville, she
adjuring me at every step and turn to let no precious moment slip to
court Elsin; and I, bland but troubled, and astonished to learn how
deep an interest she took in my undoing--I with worry enough before me,
not inclusive of a courtship that I found superfluous and unimportant.

When she was rid of me, making no concealment of her disappointment and
impatience, I looked for Elsin, but found Rosamund Barry, and led her
out in one of those animated figures we had learned at home from the
Frenchman, Grasset--dances that suited her, the rose coquette!--gay
dances, where the petticoat reveals a pretty limb discreetly; where
fans play, opening and closing like the painted wings of butterflies
alarmed; where fingers touch, fall away, interlace and unlace; where a
light waist-clasp and a vis-a-vis leaves a moment for a whisper and its
answer, promise, assent, or low refusal as partners part, dropping away
in low, slow reverence, which ends the frivolous figure with regretful
decorum.

Askance I had seen Elsin and O'Neil, a graceful pair of figures in the
frolic, and now I sought her, leaving Rosamund to Sir Henry, but that
villain O'Neil had her to wine, and amid all that thirsty throng and
noise of laughter I missed her in the tumult, and then lost her for two
hours. I must admit those two hours sped with the gay partners that
fortune sent me--and one there was whose fingers were shyly eloquent, a
black-eyed beauty from Westchester, with a fresh savor of free winds
and grassy hillsides clinging to her, and a certain lovely awkwardness
which claims an arm to steady very often. Lord! I had her twice to ices
and to wine, and we laughed and laughed at nothing, and might have been
merrier, but her mother seized her with scant ceremony, and a strange
young gentleman breathed hard and glared at me as I recovered dignity,
which made me mad enough to follow him half across the hall ere I
reflected that my business here permitted me no quarrel of my own
seeking.

Robbed of my Westchester shepherdess, swallowing my disgust, I
s