To her, her girl was still a child; a child without a woman's thoughts, or any of a woman's charms.

And then it was so natural that Clara should like to dance with almost the only gentleman who was not absolutely a stranger to her.

Lady Desmond had been actuated rather by a feeling that it would be well that Clara should begin to know other persons.
By that feeling,--and perhaps unconsciously by another, that it would be well that Owen Fitzgerald should be relieved from his attendance on the child, and enabled to give it to the mother.

Whether Lady Desmond had at that time realized any ideas as to her own interest in this young man, it was at any rate true that she loved to have him near her.

She had refused to dance a second time with Herbert Fitzgerald; she had refused to stand up with any other person who had asked her; but with Owen she would either have danced again, or have kept him by her side, while she explained to him with flattering frankness that she could not do so lest others should be offended.
And Owen was with her frequently through the evening.