But if you have the instinct we may soon cure your
ignorance. Let me see you dance a moment.'
She stood out into the garden-path, the stile being still between
them, and seizing a side of her skirt with each hand, performed the
movements which are even yet far from uncommon in the dances of the
villagers of merry England. But her motions, though graceful, were
not precisely those which appear in the figures of a modern ball-
room.
'Well, my good friend, it is a very pretty sight,' he said, warming
up to the proceedings. 'But you dance too well--you dance all over
your person--and that's too thorough a way for the present day. I
should say it was exactly how they danced in the time of your poet
Chaucer; but as people don't dance like it now, we must consider.
First I must inquire more about this ball, and then I must see you
again.'
'If it is a great trouble to you, sir, I--'
'O no, no. I will think it over. So far so good.'
The Baron mentioned an evening and an hour when he would be passing
that way again; then mounted his horse and rode away.
On the next occasion, which was just when the sun was changing places
with the moon as an illuminator of Silverthorn Dairy, she found him
at the spot before her, and unencumbered by a horse. The melancholy
that had so weighed him down at their first interview, and had been
perceptible at their second, had quite disappeared.
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