On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud, handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her senses an unhappy association which she could not remember, and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like a bent flame, into an attitude of expectancy. "Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose arbour. "But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left."