as open as out-of-doors, both in countenance and mind, observed
plaintively to Tappingham Marsh in a corner, while they watched Miss
Betty's lavender flowers miraculously swirling through a quadrille:
"Crailey, you know, well, Crailey's been engaged before!" It was not Mr.
Chenoweth's habit to disguise his apprehensions, and Crailey Gray would
not fish for bass forever.

The same Chenoweth was he, who, maddened by the General's triumphantly
familiar way of toying with Miss Betty's fan between two dances, attempted
to propose to her during the sunrise waltz. Having sung "Oh, believe me"
in her ear as loudly as he could, he expressed the wish--quite as loudly--
"That this waltz might last for always!"

That was the seventh time it had been said to Betty during the night, and
though Mr. Chenoweth's predecessors had revealed their desires in a guise
lacking this prodigious artlessness, she already possessed no novel
acquaintance with the exclamation. But she made no comment; her partner's
style was not a stimulant to repartee. "It would be heaven," he amplified
earnestly, "it would be heaven to dance with you forever--on a desert isle
where the others couldn't come!" he finished with sudden acerbity as his
eye caught the General's.

He proceeded, and only the cessation of the music aided Miss Carewe in
stopping the declaration before it was altogether out; and at that point
Frank's own father came to her rescue, though in a fashion little saving
of her confusion. The elder Chenoweth was one of the gallant and kindly
Southern colony that made it natural for Rouen always to speak of Miss
Carewe as "Miss Betty. He was a handsome old fellow, whose hair, long
moustache and imperial were as white as he was proud of them, a Virginian
with the admirable Southern fearlessness of being thought sentimental.