CHAPTER XII.
When Susan's engagement had been approved at home, and made public to any one who took an interest in it at the hotel--and by this time the society at the hotel was divided so as to point to invisible chalk-marks such as Mr.Hirst had described, the news was felt to justify some celebration--an expedition?
That had been done already.

A dance then.
The advantage of a dance was that it abolished one of those long evenings which were apt to become tedious and lead to absurdly early hours in spite of bridge.
Two or three people standing under the erect body of the stuffed leopard in the hall very soon had the matter decided.

Evelyn slid a pace or two this way and that, and pronounced that the floor was excellent.
Signor Rodriguez informed them of an old Spaniard who fiddled at weddings--fiddled so as to make a tortoise waltz; and his daughter, although endowed with eyes as black as coal-scuttles, had the same power over the piano.

If there were any so sick or so surly as to prefer sedentary occupations on the night in question to spinning and watching others spin, the drawing-room and billiard-room were theirs.

Hewet made it his business to conciliate the outsiders as much as possible.