"That French _grande dame_ was right," thought Mrs. Tempest, "who said, '_Le noir est si flattant pour les blondes_.'" Black was flattering for Vixen's auburn hair also. Though her indifferent eye rarely glanced at the mirrored walls, she had never looked lovelier. A tall graceful figure, in billowy black tulle, wreathed with white chrysanthemums; a queen-like head, with a red-gold coronal; a throat like an ivory pillar, spanned with a broad black ribbon, fastened with a diamond clasp; diamond stars in her ears, and a narrow belt of diamonds round each white arm. "How many waltzes have you kept for me?" Captain Winstanley asked presently, coming up to Vixen. "I have not kept waltzes for anyone," she answered indifferently. "But surely you were under a promise to keep some for me? I asked you a week ago." "Did you? I am sure I never promised anything of the kind." "Here is only one little shabby waltz left," said the Captain, looking at her programme. "May I put my name down for that?" "If you like," answered Vixen indifferently; and then, with the faintest suspicion of malice, she added, "as mamma does not dance round dances." She was standing up for the Lancers presently, and her partner had just led her to her place, when she saw that she had her mother and Captain Winstanley again for her _vis-a-vis_. She grew suddenly pale, and turned away. "Will you let me sit this out?" she said. "I feel awfully ill." Her partner was full of concern, and carried her off at once to a cooler room. "It is too bad!" she muttered to herself. "The Lancers! To go romping round with a lot of wild young men and women. It is as bad as the Queen in Hamlet." This was the last dance before supper. Vixen went in to the supper-room presently with her attentive partner, who had kept by her side devotedly while the lively scramble to good old English tunes was going on in the dancing-room. "Are you better?" he asked tenderly, fanning her with her big black fan, painted with violets and white chrysanthemums. "The room is abominably hot." "Thanks. I'm quite well now. It was only a momentary faintness. But I rather hate the Lancers, don't you?" "Well, I don't know. I think, sometimes, you know, with a nice partner, they're good fun. Only one can't help treading on the ladies' trains, and they wind themselves round one's legs like snakes. I've seen fellows come awful croppers, and the lady who has done it look so sweetly unconcerned. But if one tears a lace flounce, you know, they look daggers. It's something too dreadful to feel oneself walking into honiton at ten guineas a yard, and the more one tries to extricate oneself the more harm one does."