"the right sort of girl;" but it was not
until I saw her stand up with Willingham, and marked his evident
admiration of her, and heard the remarks freely made around me, that
they were the handsomest couple in the room, that I felt a twinge of
what I would hardly allow to myself was jealousy: when, however, after
the dance, they passed me in laughing conversation, evidently in high
good humour with each other, and too much occupied to notice any one
else, I began to wonder I had never before found out what a conceited
puppy Willingham was, and set down poor Clara as an arrant flirt. But I
was in a variable mood, it seemed, and a feather--or, what some may say
is even lighter, a woman's word--was enough to turn me. So when I found
myself, by some irresistible attraction, drawn next to her again at
supper, and heard her sweet voice, and saw what I interpreted into a
smile of welcome, as she made room for me beside her, I forgave her all
past offences, and was perfectly happy for the next hour: nay, even
condescended to challenge Willingham to a glass of _soi-disant_
champagne. The Tiger, who was, according to annual custom, displaying
the tarnished uniform of the 3d Madras N. I., and illustrating his
tremendous stories of the siege of Overabad, or some such place, by
attacks on all the edibles in his neighbourhood, gave me a look of
intelligence as he requested I would "do him the honour," and shook his
whiskers with some meaning which I did not think it necessary to enquire
into. What was it to him if I chose to confine my attentions to my
undoubtedly pretty neighbour? No one could dispute my taste, at all
events; for Clara Phillips was a universal favourite, though I had
remarked that none of the numerous "eligible young men" in the room
appeared about her in the character of a dangler. She was engaged to
Willingham for the waltz next after supper, and I felt queerish again,
till she willingly agreed to dance the next set with me, on condition
that I would oblige her so far as to ask a friend of hers to be my
partner in the mean time. "She is a very nice girl, Mr. Hawthorne,
though, perhaps, not one of the _belles_ of the room, and has danced but
twice this evening, and it will be so kind in you to ask her--only don't
do it upon my introduction, but let Major Jones introduce you as if at
your own request." Let no one say that vanity, jealousy, and all those
pretty arts by which woman wrongs her better nature, are the rank