[Illustration: THE DANCING LESSON.]
Of course I fell, or fancied I fell, in love with her. To her mother’s extreme distress, she gave me every encouragement, partly for fun, partly to annoy Colonel Ibbetson, whom she had apparently grown to hate. And, indeed, from the way he spoke of her to me (this trainer of English gentlemen), he well deserved that she should hate him. He never had the slightest intention of marrying her—that is certain; and yet he had made her the talk of the place.
And here I may state that Ibbetson was one of those singular men who go through life afflicted with the mania that they are fatally irresistible to women.
He was never weary of pursuing them—not through any special love of gallantry for its own sake, I believe, but from the mere wish to appear as a Don G
