"
"I don't promise anything of the kind," she replied, with a laugh that
was chiefly the expression of her intense nervous tension. It jarred
upon his feelings, and confirmed him in the belief that their long
separation had broken up their old relations completely, and that she,
in the new career which her beauty opened before her, wished for no
embarrassing relations of any kind.
"Well," he said, with an answering laugh, "I suppose I must take you
for what you are and propose to be--that is, if I ever find out."
In a few moments more, after some light badinage, he left her with
Mr. and Mrs. Muir on the piazza, and went to claim his waltz with Miss
Wildmere.
CHAPTER XI
"I FEAR I SHALL FAIL"
The band had been discoursing lively strains for some time, and Miss
Wildmere had at last dragged her mother down for a chaperon--the only
available one as yet. The anxious mother was eager to return to her
fretting child, and her daughter was much inclined to resent Graydon's
prolonged absence. "If it were politic, and I had other acquaintances,
I would punish him," she thought. It was a new experience for her to
sit in a corner of the parlor, apparently neglected, while others were
dancing.
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