If he entertained the smallest doubt on that head, the doubt would have been dispelled could he have looked at the moment upon the picture of Mr Musgrave seated with his late partner in a retired spot, screened from the curious by tall palms and other pot-plants, to which retreat Peggy had led him, as she led only her favoured partners, at the finish of the dance. Mr Musgrave sat forward in his seat, fingering one of the blush roses which had fallen from Peggy's dress when she left the ballroom. A clumsy movement of his own towards the finish of the dance had been responsible for the damage, as he was well aware. He had picked up the rose when it fell, and he was now smoothing and touching its petals as he held it lightly between his fingers, as once he had smoothed and touched, and idly played with and destroyed, a glove which she had dropped. "I fear," he said, "I am in fault for the detachment of this. You will begin to think me a very clumsy person." "Those little accidents happen so often when one is dancing," she replied. "It is of no consequence." "It could, perhaps," he suggested, "be sewn on again." "I don't think it is worth bothering about," she answered. "Besides, it is broken off at the head. Never mind the rose; it isn't a real one. I hope you weren't horribly bored at dancing with me? I believe you only danced because--" She paused. Mr Musgrave, still fingering the silken petals of the rose, looked up inquiringly. "Why do you think I danced?" he asked. "Because I asked you to," she answered, smiling. He smiled too. "No," he contradicted. "The idea certainly arose from your suggestion. I doubt whether I should have the courage to inflict myself on anyone as a dance partner without that encouragement. But I had another reason." "Tell me," she said softly, and looked at him with so demure an expression, and then looked away again even more demurely, so that had the vicar chanced upon this tableau also he would assuredly have applied to her the term he had once made use of to his wife in speaking of her; he would have called her a little baggage. But the vicar was not there to see, and John Musgrave rather liked the demure expression. He had an altogether different term for it, which was "womanly." "If it interests you to know," he said, "I had in remembrance the occasion when I declined to oblige you in the matter of the tableaux. I did not desire to appear ungracious a second time." "Then," said Peggy, in a low voice, and still without looking at him, "you danced to please me." "You have stated my reason correctly this time," John Musgrave answered quietly. "I wanted to please you." He rose as the sound of the music broke upon their ears, and offered her his arm. "And now I am going to please myself," he said, "and watch you dancing this."