Margaret withdrew her hand softly, and passing behind them, went to one of the sofas and sat down beside Harriet. Mrs. Fitzpatrick and Mr. Haveloc continued in earnest conversation. Directly after he had spoken to her, he looked round as if to address Margaret, but finding her gone, and people scattered between them, for the room was now filling, he turned back again. Margaret tried to keep up a conversation with Harriet; she took up her fan, and asked Mrs. Gage to show her some of the Spanish movements with it. Harriet, full of fun, complied. She showed her how to say, "How are you--come, and see me," and other little sentences of the kind; but she warned her that this accomplishment did not depend solely on the dexterous handling of the fan, but required to be seconded by the expression of the lady's eye. Lord James Deacon wished to share the lesson; but at the first trial, he endangered the ivory sticks, and Harriet took the fan from his hand. Lucy declined a trial, and Everard got to the farthest end of the room, behind the piano, because Harriet had already called to him for a footstool. Lord Raymond said gravely that he did not think the Spanish women could be much better than they should be; and that he thought these tricks with fans were as bad as sending about tulips, and cinders, and rubbish, as the women did in Turkey. Lady Raymond laughed at him, and so did all the others. Miss Campbell was wild to learn, and Margaret surrendered her place to her; but dinner was announced before the lesson could proceed. Margaret, as usual, was assigned to Everard Gage, and as usual they went on very peaceably. Mr. Haveloc was between Miss Campbell, and Mrs. Fitzpatrick, but he appeared to devote all his attention to the latter lady. Lord James Deacon treated Margaret with his usual insolent neglect; staring hard at her when it suited him, and at other times neither addressing a word to her, nor helping her to what she wanted at table. In the evening, Lady Raymond came up to Mr. Haveloc who was standing by Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and renewed her entreaties that he would take the part of Alphonse. He declined, laughing--she pressed the point; she bought Lord Raymond to press the point--still he laughed it off. Nothing he should like better than to play, if he could; but it was a weakness of his, that he could not overcome. He was too diffident to succeed on the boards. Harriet accused him of being a Saint. He bowed to the compliment, and said he saw neither reason nor precedent for saints to put on the buskin when they had no turn for wearing it. Lady James Deacon who had secretly destined him for her friend Miss Campbell, now called on that young lady to persuade him. Miss Campbell was sitting on a sofa making pencil alterations in a song. She looked up with her quaint expression. "Oh, don't teaze him!" she said, "I would not. Put his name down, and send him a part-book, if you cannot get a _better_ Alphonse."