Little Miss McCable, who has the reputation of being one of Ottawa's
best dancers, bites her lower lips sarcastically, as an admirer of Miss
Edgeworth's asks her, "does she not find her dancing faultless," and
declares she "kaunt see what there is so striking about her."
But heedless of those who surround them, Vivian leads his fair partner
through the crowd, as the strains of waltzes picked from "Olivette" and
"Patience," flood the ball-room. Any girl may boast of being free from
susceptibilities of a disastrous kind, but few girls _à la mode_ to-day
can overcome the resistless fascination of a dreamy waltz, and Honor
Edgeworth who was the very poetry of motion in herself, was lost to
everything else but her waltz at this moment--how well Vivian Standish
guided, she thought--how well he held himself! how _distingué_ he
looked!
He had begun to puzzle her a little, and though she certainly did not
like him, there was a sort of strange attraction for her in his voice,
appearance and manner. I wonder if men can know what there is in a
voice?
It is a precious talisman that serves at all times, and the one
infallible means a man has to find his way to a woman's heart, for a
woman never forgets the pathos, and sweetness of a voice that has called
her "his own."
Vivian Standish had a voice to covet and to envy, he said the most
matter-of-fact thing in a way that captivated the most careless
listener, and the girls declared that when he spoke to them they were
"perfectly distracted." Ottawa is the most interesting spot on earth for
a person of any extraordinary ability to gain notoriety. If it is a girl
the male element is effervescing all at once, men fall in love with her
in turns, she is almost devoured with attention at evening parties, and
visits all the suggestive nooks, and sits on the stairs with the
handsomest and toniest of Ottawa's "big boys;" even married men get the
craze, for Ottawa boasts of quite a little circle of benedicts, who are
not slaves to petty prejudices inflicted as a rule on the married, and
though not open advocates of "Free Love," they take all the privileges
that hang around the border limit, for they do not doubt, but that any
one might know when they are seen escorting pretty flirts, riding,
driving, or walking through such delightful walks as "Beechwood," or
"Richmond Road," that the topic of conversation is painfully appropriate
to their vocations, and as a proof if any one were to join them, at the
moment, they would be either admiring nature or art, or anything in fact
but each other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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