This treatment, which succeeded so well in Mr. Meeker’s case, Honora had previously applied to others of his sex.  Like most people with a future, she began young.  Of late, for instance, Mr. George Hanbury had shown a tendency to regard her as his personal property; for George had a high-handed way with him,—­boys being an enigma to his mother.  Even in those days he had a bullet head and a red face and square shoulders, and was rather undersized for his age—­which was Honora’s.

Needless to say, George did not approve of the dancing class; and let it be known, both by words and deeds, that he was there under protest.  Nor did he regard with favour Honora’s triumphal progress, but sat in a corner with several congenial spirits whose feelings ranged from scorn to despair, commenting in loud whispers upon those of his sex to whom the terpsichorean art came more naturally.  Upon one Algernon Cartwright, for example, whose striking likeness to the Van Dyck portrait of a young king had been more than once commented upon by his elders, and whose velveteen suits enhanced the resemblance.  Algernon, by the way, was the favourite male pupil of Mr. Meeker; and, on occasions, Algernon and Honora were called upon to give exhibitions for the others, the sight of which filled George with contemptuous rage.  Algernon danced altogether too much with Honora,—­so George informed his cousin.

The simple result of George’s protests was to make Honora dance with Algernon the more, evincing, even at this period of her career, a commendable determination to resent dictation.  George should have lived in the Middle Ages, when the spirit of modern American womanhood was as yet unborn.  Once he contrived, by main force, to drag her out into the hall.

“George,” she said, “perhaps, if you’d let me alone perhaps I’d like you better.”

“Perhaps,” he retorted fiercely, “if you wouldn’t make a fool of yourself with those mother’s darlings, I’d like you better.”

“George,” said Honora, “learn to dance.”

“Never!” he cried, but she was gone.  While hovering around the door he heard Mrs. Hayden’s voice.

“Unless I am tremendously mistaken, my dear,” that lady was remarking to Mrs. Dwyer, whose daughter Emily’s future millions were powerless to compel youths of fourteen to dance with her, although she is now happily married, “unless I am mistaken, Honora will have a career.  The child will be a raving beauty.  And she has to perfection the art of managing men.”

“As her father had the art of managing women,” said Mrs. Dwyer.  “Dear me, how well I remember Randolph!  I would have followed him to—­to Cheyenne.”

Mrs. Hayden laughed.  “He never would have gone to Cheyenne, I imagine,” she said.

“He never looked at me, and I have reason to be profoundly thankful for it,” said Mrs. Dwyer.

Virginia Hayden bit her lip.  She remembered a saying of Mrs. Brice, “Blessed are the ugly, for they shall not be tempted.”