rove
less interesting."
She again sent him a grave, questioning look, and began to gaze intently
upon the stone in her bracelet.
"I suppose you will laugh at me," began she, while a sudden blush
flitted over her countenance. "But this is my first ball, and I feel
as if I had rushed into a whirlpool, from which I have, since the first
rash plunge was made, been vainly trying to escape. I feel so dreadfully
forlorn. I hardly know anybody here except my cousin, who invited me,
and I hardly think I know him either."
"Well, since you are irredeemably committed," replied Ralph, as the
music, after some prefatory flourishes, broke into the delicious rhythm
of a Strauss waltz, "then it is no use struggling against fate. Come,
let us make the plunge together. Misery loves company."
He offered her his arm, and she arose, somewhat hesitatingly, and
followed.
"I am afraid," she whispered, as they fell into line with the procession
that was moving down the long hall, "that you have asked me to dance
merely because I said I felt forlorn. If that is the case, I should
prefer to be led back to my seat."
"What a base imputation!" cried Ralph.
There was something so charmingly naive in this self-depreciation--
something so altogether novel in his experience, and, he could not help
adding, just a little bit countrified. His spirits rose; he began to
relish keenly his position as an experienced man of the world, and, in
the agreeable glow of patronage and conscious superiority, chatted with
hearty ABANDON with his little rustic beauty.
"If your dancing is as perfect as your German exercises were," said she,
laughing, as they swung out upon the floor, "then I promise myself a
good deal of pleasure from our meeting."
"Never fear," answered he, quickly reversing his step, and whirling with
many a capricious turn away among the thronging couples.
When Ralph drove home in his carriage toward morning he briefly summed
up his impressions of Bertha in the following adjectives: intelligent,
delightfully unsophisticated, a little bit verdant, but devilish pretty.
Some weeks later Colonel Grim received an appointment at the fortress of
Aggershuus, and immediately took up his residence in the capital. He saw
that his son cut a fine figure in the highest circles of society, and
expressed his gratification in the most emphatic terms. If he had
known, however, that Ralph was in the habit of visiting, with alarming
regularity, at
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