Floyd Grandon's Honor, Amanda Minnie Douglas [you can read anyone .TXT] 📗

the balcony chairs and watch the dancing. By and by there are some soft melodious waves with no especial meaning, then the French horns pipe a delicious thrill, "viol, flute and bassoon" burst into beguiling bloom of the Zamora, and hands steal out to other hands, arms cling to arms, and the winding, bewildering waltz begins.

Violet is talking to a young man, one of the Grandon Park neighbors, who stands bashfully wondering if it would do to ask her to waltz. Unconsciously her feet are keeping time, and her heart seems to rise and fall to the enchantment in the air. Then she feels a presence behind her and turns.

"This is our waltz," Floyd Grandon says, just above a whisper, and, bowing to her companion, leads her away.

"Shall we go out on the balcony?" he asks, and the quick pressure on his arm answers him. Out in the wide warm summer night, where the air throbs and glows with some weird enchantment, he puts his arm about her and draws her close; there are several irregular measures, then their figures and steps seem to settle to each other, and they float down the long space, up again, there is reversing to steady her a little, then on and on. He looks down at the drooping eyes with their tremulous lids, at the faint flush that comes and goes, he feels the throbbing breath, and realizes what a powerful and seductive temptation this might become. He is even kindled himself. For the first time he feels himself capable of rousing such a torrent of love in her that her whole soul shall be absorbed in his. Down in this shady corner, while the other couples are quite at the other end, he raises the sweet face, tranced in the beguiling melody of movement, and kisses the lips with all a man's passionate fervor, holds her in such a clasp that she struggles and throws out one hand wildly, as if suddenly stricken blind, and a frightened expression drowns the sweet delight.

"Oh!" and she gives a little cry of pain and mystery.

"My darling!"

The voice is tenderly reassuring, and they float on again, but for a brief moment the lightness seems gone out of her feet. He draws a long, deep inspiration. Sweet, tender, and devoted as she is, it is not her time to love, and he remembers all the years between them. She is as innocent of the deeper depths of passion as Cecil.

There is a long, long throb on the air, almost a wail of regret, from the human voices of the violins. The cornet seems to run off in the distance, and the horns have a sob in their last notes. The dancers stop with languid reluctance. Floyd Grandon leads his wife along as if he would take her down the steps, away somewhere.

"Let us sit here," she cries, suddenly, and there is a curious strain in her voice, a thrill as of fear. Does she not dare trust herself with him anywhere, everywhere?

"Are you tired?" he asks, with a tenderness that touches her.

She still seems like one in a dream.

"No," she answers. "It was enchanting. I could dance forever. I don't know----"

Her voice falters and drops as the last notes of the music have done. It would be a mortal sin to awaken her. She shall dream on until the right time comes.

"Then you liked it?" His voice has a steady, reassuring tone. "There is another; shall we try it again, presently?"

This time it is the "Beautiful Blue Danube."

"Oh, no, no!" she says, vehemently.

The strains begin to float and throb again, light, airy, delicate, with one pathetic measure that always touches the soul. She rouses and listens, then the little hand creeps into his beseechingly.

"Oh," she says, "may I take that back! I think I was beside myself. Will you waltz with me again?"

It is an exquisite waltz, pure, dreamy pleasure, delicious to the last bar, and nothing has startled her. He watches her lovely flower-like face that is full of supreme content.

"Now," he says, after she has rested awhile, "we must look after our guests. Let us take a stroll around."

Nearly everybody has been waltzing. Marcia and her husband are present. It was quite against his desire that Floyd extended an invitation to Jasper Wilmarth, but he felt he could not do otherwise. He does not mean to be over-cordial with his brother-in-law in the matter of hospitalities. Wilmarth is proud of this victory, because he knows it cost Floyd Grandon something. He is glad, too, of an opportunity of becoming better acquainted with Mrs. Grandon. This does not altogether mean conversing with her, although he has managed several passing talks, but he likes to watch her, and the old thought comes into his mind that with a little better planning he might have won her. A half-suggestion of his had put the thought of Eugene Grandon in the mind of St. Vincent, but he well knew that Eugene would only laugh such a proposal to scorn. The factor he had not counted on was Floyd himself.

Marcia is set wild with the first waltz. She is new to wifehood, and she stands a little in awe of Jasper Wilmarth. There are people, husbands, who object to it. Eugene is too late to secure madame, and stands looking rather bored and sulky.

"Would you mind dancing it with me, just once?" says Marcia, pleadingly.

"Of course not," he answers, indifferently.

"Eugene wants me to waltz with him," she whispers to her husband; and he, in deep conversation with a neighbor, simply nods. There will be time enough for marital training when the worship becomes irksome, and he wants spice instead of sweet. They shall all see that Marcia has an indulgent husband and is not to be commiserated. But when he sees Floyd Grandon floating up and down with that lovely fairy-like figure in his arms, he hates him more bitterly than before. Irene Lepelletier and Jasper Wilmarth could well join hands here. The gulf between them is not so very wide.

Marcia is up in the next waltz as well, but this time with an old admirer. Eugene resists the glances of Lucia Brade and makes a wall-flower of himself. He begins to watch Violet presently, and remark with what entire perfection she waltzes. Who would have suspected it in a little convent-bred girl? She _is_ pretty in spite of all detractions, Laura has discovered. How her shining hair glitters, as if sprinkled with diamond-dust.

Cecil comes running up to her after they have promenaded around among the guests.

"Mamma," she exclaims, "that was just as we dance. Why can't you dance with me here to all the pretty music!"

Violet glances up to meet her husband's smile of assent. "Next time, Cecil," she says, slipping the little hand in hers.

They do not have to wait very long. After a mazourka comes a waltz, and Cecil is made supremely happy.

"How utterly bewitching they look!" says a low, melodious voice at Floyd Grandon's side. "How tall Cecil has grown in a year!"

"A year!" he repeats. Yes, it is a year ago that his old life ended, and how much has been crowded in that brief while.

"You are a wise man," madame says, in an indescribable tone. "You have not forced your bud into premature blossoming. There might be a decade between Laura and your wife."

"I wonder if Laura had any real girlhood?" he remarks, musingly.

"Why, yes, at fourteen, perhaps. That is the way with most of us. But hers, not beginning so soon, will have the longer reign. How lovely the river looks to-night! I should like to go down on the terrace," she adds, after a moment.

"I am at your service," and he rises.

They cross the lawn amid groups sauntering in the moonlight, keeping time to the music, if they do not dance. The whole scene is like enchantment. They stroll on and on, down the steps and then over the broad strip of grass. The cool air blows up along the shore, and with the tide coming in every ripple is crested with silver. Over at the edge of the horizon the stars dare to shine out amid the silence of the rocks and woods opposite, making a suggestive, shadowy land.

"'On such a night,'" she quotes, with a smile that might beguile a man's soul.

"We could not have had anything more beautiful. And I owe a great deal of the perfection of the scene to you, since the season was in other hands. Allow me to express my utmost gratitude."

"I am glad to be able to add to your pleasure in any way," she answers, with a kind of careless joy. "Possibly I may add to your displeasure. May I make a confession?" and she smiles again.

"To me?" not caring to conceal his surprise.

"Yes, to you. I shall bind you by all manner of promises, but the murder must out."

"Is it as grave as that?"

"Yes. If you had not gone by the heats and caprices of youthful passion, you would be less able to extend your mantle of charity. I care enough for your good opinion and for that of your family not to be placed in a false light by the imprudence of youth,--shall we call it that?"

"I cannot imagine," he begins, puzzled, and yet almost afraid to trench on this suspicious ground.

"Can you not? Then I give the young man credit for a degree of prudence I was fearful he did not possess."

"Oh," he says, with a curious sense of relief, "you mean--my brother?"

"Floyd," in a low, confidential tone, and she so rarely gives him his Christian name that he is struck with her beautiful utterance of it, "I want you to do me this justice at least, to let me stand higher in your estimation than that of a mere silly coquette, who makes a bid for the admiration of men in general. There was a time when it might have turned my head a little, but then I had no _general_ admiration to tempt me. I have been friendly with Eugene, as any woman so much older might be, and the regard he has for me is not love at all, but just now he cannot see the difference. He feels bitter because he cannot have matters as he fancies he would like, and in a few years he will be most grateful for the cruelty, as he calls it."

"Oh," Floyd says, with a sense of shame, "he certainly has not been foolish enough to----"

"You surely do not think I would allow him to make an idiot of himself!" she replies, with an almost stinging disdain. "I should not want him to remember that of me. One may make a mistake in youth, or commit an error, but with added years there would be small excuse. I had a truer regard for him, as well as myself. It was wiser to quench the flame before it reached that height," and she smiles with a sense of approval. "So if you see us at sword's points, you will know that the disease has reached the crisis, and you may reasonably expect an improvement. Indeed, it is time he turned his attention to other matters. Shall you be able to make a business man of him?"

"I am afraid not," replies Floyd Grandon.

"Now that I have confessed, I feel quite