“Not dance, Monsieur! and why?” cried Rosa, with a burst of laughter, real southern laughter, such as you never hear in polite society in England now. “I look on dancing, Madame Floriani, as an invention of the enemy.” “What enemy?--the Russians? Oh no, I assure you, les Russes did not introduce the dance. That is drôle; I did not know you were such good patriots down here!” And she laughed again. “But Madame Floriani,” said Miss Grandville, coming to the rescue; “we don’t ourselves think dancing proper.” “Not proper!” said Rosa, flushing to her temples, “what monstrous ideas! What impropriety can there be in a party of young people amusing themselves with dancing or anything else convenable?” “It is a worldly amusement,” said Miss Grandville stiffly. “And a degradation of the immortal nature,” said Mr. Bentley. Madame Rosa looked from one to the other as if they had been Aztecs or Red Indians, or any other unusual specimens of humanity; then, utterly unable to find any sort of answer to such sentiments, turned back to the piano and rattled off a brilliant fantasia, which no one understood and every one thought noisy. It was the same with the games that Madame Rosa proposed. For, when dancing was forbidden, she thought she would enliven her society by games. At first every one refused to take part in them. They were dull, childish, uninteresting, a waste of time; but at last she gained over some of the younger girls to a stray Cantab or two, whom she had managed to get hold of somehow, no one knew how. “She must have fished them out of the lake,” said Miss Grandville; for, indeed, Cantabs were rare animals in Langthwaite, owing to the character for dullness and cant which that beautiful vale had gained in the university. A few used to come, certainly: generally pale young men wearing spectacles and afflicted with colds; but Madame Floriani soon learnt to distinguish the various types, and to fly this type as she would poison. Yet even when she had gone so far as to positively establish games at her soirées, the Miss Grandvilles and the Bentleyites used to sit by grimly, and protest in loud whispers against the downward course of things in Langthwaite.