"That is doubly a compliment, coming from a dweller across the border," said the Governor, with a smile. "For our part, whatever quarrels we may have with the men of your province, we are forced to lower our swords before its women. Beauty is the David who slays his tens of thousands, where strength, like Saul, counts its thousands only. It is not every one," he added, with a look which older men permit themselves and call impertinence in a youth,--"it is not every one who can move in a ball-room as if it were her birthright to be admired."
"Thank you," said Peggy, and then blushed crimson. "What a dolt I am," she thought; "as if he meant me!"
To cover her confusion she fixed her eyes upon a soldierly man at the head of the room.
"Can you, who know every one, tell me," she asked, "who is the cavalier who dances with an abstracted air, as though his thoughts were fixed on serious subjects, and his mind only permitted his body to dance on condition that it made no demand on his attention?"
"Why--why--" stammered Peggy, "I thought he would look like a cut-throat or a pirate."
The Governor laughed so loud that every one turned and wondered what the girl talking with him could have said that was so mightily clever, and thus her blunder did the new-comer more good in social repute than the finest wit.
"So the Maryland picture of poor Claiborne supplies him with all the attributes of the devil, except the horns and hoof? And you would never have known him as different from half the worthies here to-night. Well, I'll tell you privately what Master William Claiborne really is,--a good friend, an able secretary of the Council, and a damned obstinate enemy. When Baltimore undertook to oust him from Kent Island he might better have thrust his hand into a nest of live wasps. Ah, what? Our turn again. Why, young lady, your talk is so beguiling I had quite lost myself."
Peggy smiled behind her fan at the Governor's notion that it was she who had done the talking. She wished--she did wish Christopher could have heard him say it, though. But Christopher, when she begged him to be present at the dance, had shaken his head and answered that he should not know how to carry himself at a ball. Peggy, remembering her mother's stories of Christopher at court, and how Queen Henrietta had asked to have him presented to her as the finest gallant at Buckingham Palace, had fallen to crying then. Even now, following her little vanity came a great rush of pity and tenderness that brought the quick tears, and made her glad when the dance was ended, and Sir William, bowing low over her hand, led her to her seat with a kiss.