Try as she would she could not overcome it, neither could she remove
her gaze from the three females who, poor things, were but doing their
best to add to the family coffers. Up and down, and round and round
they went, the string band twanging an accompaniment, until the gauze
scarf of the middle lady catching in the hanging chandelier put an end
to their rhythmical swayings, while like hens with a suspended cherry
they hopped in turn off the ground in their effort to disentangle their
one and only bit of covering.

Everyone sat still until the disentanglement had taken place, upon
which event the dancers once more advanced in force, each selecting a
special man victim, until Jill, absolutely helpless and afraid of
raising native wrath by allowing even a glimmer of a smile to appear,
buried her pretty head on the marchese's over-padded shoulder, which
action he of course took for a sign of encouragement, responding to it
by slipping his arm round the girl's waist, but circumspectly enough so
that it should not be seen by the Can-King's relations, while Jill
prayed for strength to resist until the end.

The end came in a positive Catherine-wheel exhibition of posturing, and
a deathly silence on the part of the audience; the men not daring to
make any comment, the women not daring to look at each other, until the
widow, suddenly seizing upon the situation, clapped her little hands
roguishly, and avowed in a babyish voice that "_C'était bien gentil et
original, n'est ce pas_," which she didn't think at all really.

Anyway her opinion served as a break, so that on the exit of the
dancers in single file, which was ten-fold more trying to the
spectators than their entry, with stretching of cramped limbs and
stereotyped utterances such as "how very Eastern," "so unexpected," the