the
boisterous Schwartz. Her truly beaming beauty, her dress, her haughty
bearing, her flashing eyes, called forth a universal ah! of astonishment
and admiration. Petrea forgot that she was sitting while she looked upon
her. She thought that she had never seen anything so transporting as
Sara in the whirl of the dance. But the Countess Solenstrale, as she
sate in her chair, said of this couple--nothing; nay, people even
imagined that they read an expression of displeasure in her countenance.
The Misses Aftonstjerna sailed round with much dignity.

"My dear girl," said Elise kindly, but seriously, to Sara after the
waltz, "you must not dance thus; your chest will not allow it. How warm
you are! You really burn!"

"It is my climate," answered Sara; "it agrees with me excellently."

"I beseech you sit this dance. It is positively injurious to you to heat
yourself thus," said Elise.

"This dance?" returned Sara; "impossible! I am engaged for it to Colonel
H----."

"Then, do not dance the next," besought Elise; "if you would do me a
pleasure, do not dance it with Schwartz. He dances in such a wild manner
as is prejudicial to the health; besides which, it is hardly becoming."

"It gives me pleasure to dance with him," answered Sara, both with pride
and insolence, as she withdrew; and the mother, wounded and displeased,
returned to her seat.

The Countess Solenstrale lavished compliments on Elise on account of her
children. "They are positively the ornament of the room," said
she;--"_charmant!_ and your son a most prepossessing young man--so
handsome and _comme il faut_! A charming ball!"

Isabella Aftonstjerna threw beaming glances on the handsome Henrik.

"What madness this dancing is!" said Mr. Munter, as with a strong
expression of weariness and melancholy he seated himself beside Evelina.
"_Nay_, look how they hop about and exert themselves, as if without this
they could not get thin enough; then, good heavens! how difficult it
seems, and how ugly it is! As if this could give them any pleasure! For
some of them it seems as if it were day-labour, and as if it were a
frenzy to others; and for a third, a kind of affectation; nay, I must go
my ways, for I shall become mad or splenetic if I look any longer on
this super-extra folly!"

"If Eva Frank were dancing too, you would not think it so," said
Evelina, with a well-bred smile.

"Eva!" repeated he, whilst a light seemed to diffuse itself over his
countenance,