billowing after you; without being dazzled with diamond-shine;
without a truly Lord tagging after you?

He kept his head, Lord Harold did--even if it is a mutton-head.
That helped me at first. He was so cold, so stupid, so slow, so
good-tempered--so just himself. And after the first plunge--

I tell you, Mag Monahan, there's one thing that's stronger than
wine to a woman--it's being beautiful. Oh! And I was beautiful.
I knew it before I got that quick hush, with the full applause
after it. And because I was beautiful, I got saucy, and then
calm, and then I caught Fred Obermuller's voice--he had taken the
book from the prompter and stood there himself--and after that it
was easy sailing.

He was there yet when the act was over, and I trailed out,
followed by my Lord. He let the prompt-book fall from his hands
and reached them both out to me.

I flirted my jeweled fan at him and swept him a courtesy.

Cool? No, I wasn't. Not a bit of it. He was daffy with the sight
of me in all that glory, and I knew it.

"Nance," he whispered, "you wonderful girl, if I didn't know
about that little thief up at the Bronsonia I'd--I'd marry you
alive, just for the fun of piling pretty things on you."

"The deuce you would!" I sailed past him, with Topham and my
Lord in my wake.