You wouldn't have me fall at the feet of those mealy-winged moths fluttering around us, with heads softer than their poor little hearts--you wouldn't, I hope ?" With which Mr.Walraven went straight back to Miss Oleander and asked her to dance the lancers.
Miss Oleander, turning with ineffable calm from a bevy of rose-robed and white-robed young ladies, said, "Yes," as if Mr.Walraven was no more than any other man, and stood up to take his arm.
But there is many a slip.

Miss Oleander and Mr.Walraven never danced that particular set, for just then there came a ring at the door-bell so pealing and imperious that it sounded sharply even through the noisy ball-room.
"The Marble Guest, surely," Blanche said, "and very determined to be heard." Before the words were well uttered there was a sound of an altercation in the hall--one of the tall footmen pathetically protesting, and a shrill female voice refusing to listen to those plaintive protests.

Then there suddenly fell peace.
"After a storm there cometh a calm," Mr.Walraven said.

"Miss Oleander, shall we move on?
Well, Johnson, what is it ?" For Johnson, the taller of the two tall footmen, stood before them gazing beseechingly at his master.
"It's a woman, sir, all wet and dirty, and horrid to look at.

She says she will see you, and there she stands, and Wilson nor me we can't do nothing with her.