Once, in a pause
of the waltz, she was standing with her partner close to where
Graham was leaning against a wall. He had an air of being
horribly bored, as indeed he was; but Madelon's eye caught
his, and he was obliged to smile in answer to her look of
radiant pleasure.
"You are enjoying yourself, I see, Madelon," he said.
"I never was so happy!" she cried. "Ah! if you knew how I love
dancing!--and it is so many years since I have had a waltz!"
Later on in the evening, Lady Lorrimer, the fashionable, gay,
kind-hearted hostess, came up to her.
"Miss Linders," she said, "I have a favour to ask of you. My
aunt, Lady Adelaide Spencer, is passionately fond of music,
and Mrs. Vavasour has been telling us how beautifully you
sing. Would it be too much to ask you for one song? It is not
fair, I know, in the midst of a ball, but the next dance is
only a quadrille, I see----"
"I shall be most happy," says Madelon, blushing up, and
following Lady Lorrimer down a long corridor into a music-
room. There were not above a dozen people present when she
began to sing, but the room was quite full before she rose
from the piano.
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