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Some mallice has corrupted your opinion of that we call the Ball.

“Mind you! Make way!” shrilled a voice, and the next instant the footboy Wrigley dived between them, a brimming dish of chocolate held high.

On Mr. Langworthy the collision had no more impact than Tommy Wardour had earlier, but Sarah was nearly flung to the floor, the bowlful of thick chocolate oscillating, overtopping the rim of the cup to spatter her dress.

“Why, you great bumbling bungler,” Langworthy snapped, his temper getting the better of him. “Off with you! Are you all right, Mrs. Sebastian?”

“Yes,” she replied quickly, biting her lip to hide her dismay at the blobs running down her skirts in spreading stains. Mortified and annoyed as she was at Wrigley’s clumsiness, it would only make matters worse if it drew Mrs. Dere’s notice.

Too late.

“What is this ?” cried the mistress of Perryfield, her guests parting to either side before her like the Red Sea before Moses’s rod and outstretched hand.

“This mutton-fisted clod ran into Mrs. Sebastian and me, spilling chocolate on her,” explained Langworthy through a tight jaw.

“If you weren’t standing so close to her I wouldn’t have!” piped Wrigley with an indignant flash from his blue eyes.

The flash was met with utter stillness on Langworthy’s part, as if he had turned him to stone, the only movement his own eyes widening in a look Sarah could not understand, and then narrowing in fury the next second.

But so overcome was Mrs. Dere by this show of uppishness from a servant—and a temporary, incompetent one at that—that she seized Wrigley by the elbow and marched him away, hissing, “Go and get water and a cloth from Mrs. Robson and come back with them at once!” Then, turning back to her guests, she pasted on a smile.

“My goodness, what a to-do. How hard it is to find reliable servants! But we must not let things like this spoil our fun. Shall we resume our dancing? Poor Mrs. Sebastian will have to miss The Queen’s Jig, but surely she will be set to rights by the dance following it, Christchurch Bells. ”

“Should I wait here with Mrs. Sebastian, madam?” asked Tommy Wardour, his eyes sliding toward the remaining little cakes. “I was to be her partner for The Queen’s Jig.”

“How gallant of you, Tommy,” she replied. “However, you will still be able to observe, if you cannot participate. Blodgett, fetch a chair for Mrs. Sebastian. And Uncle, if you would lead the way…”

Sarah watched them go, feeling abandoned. Not by the children, per se, but by Mr. Langworthy. He had no choice but to follow, of course, yet still she envied whichever person would dance with him or beside him next.

Her view of the departing fortunate ones was blocked by Blodgett lumbering up, chair in hand, and Sarah hastily made to take it from him, lest he collapse in placing it for her. Which was how she did not see Mr. Langworthy slip back until he was directly before her.

“Mrs. Sebastian.”

“Mr. Langworthy.” She was glad of her seat then, for her pulse resumed its ridiculous unevenness again.

“I—hope the stain will come out.”

She nodded.

“I would—stay and help, if I could.”

This brought a smile. “Help? Do you mean you would scrub and soak, sir?”

But no answering amusement gleamed in his eyes. Rather he looked troubled. “I—have my doubts about that clumsy footboy.”

Then Sarah did laugh, though she glanced Blodgett-ward.

Blodgett merely shuffled away toward the refreshment table, however, beginning to load used dishes on a tray.

“You are not alone in your skepticism, Mr. Langworthy,” she said in a low tone.

“If you could have seen young Wrigley the other night! I believe, if Mrs. Markham Dere ever chooses to host another ball, she will likely prefer to borrow other people’s servants than introduce ones altogether unknown and untried. ”

“How did she find these ones? I would be on my guard against—the younger one—”

“Do you suppose he will dump the basin of water over my head, now?” she teased. “Come now—he is young and inexperienced, and his fingers seem to be all thumbs—”

“It is not that,” he interrupted, “though that is bad enough. But I suspect—”

“Mr. Langworthy!” called their hostess, reappearing in the doorway. “We wait on you, sir.”

His fine, broad shoulders sagging an inch, he gave Sarah a final, mystifying, concerned glance and turned to follow Mrs. Dere.

He suspected what ? Sarah wanted to demand, cursing Mrs. Dere’s timing.

From the drawing room, Mrs. Dere’s instructions to the dancers reached Sarah’s ears indistinctly, and they were soon drowned in Mrs. Chauncey beginning again to play.

A few minutes onward, while Blodgett stood like a sleeping statue and Sarah tried not to fidget, Wrigley reappeared with the requisite items and a wild expression.

Would he, in fact, dump the basin of water over her?

Sarah wondered. Because whatever hostile looks Wrigley had given her at the dinner were nothing to the face he wore now.

A trickle of trepidation ran down her spine.

But how could the boy possibly blame her for this mishap, when he would never have spilled chocolate on her had he watched where he was going?

With a final heave, Wrigley set the basin at Sarah’s feet.

Then he knelt, wetting the cloth and beginning to soak the stained portions.

Uncomfortable, and wishing she were the sort of young lady who could ignore a servant’s existence whilst being attended to, Sarah studied the top of the boy’s wig.

It took her a few minutes to recognize that, as when he sewed up Harold Lane’s torn stocking, Wrigley showed unexpected skill in blotting the excess chocolate and applying Windsor soap.

Though Sarah would have to finish the day in skirts discolored with wet blotches, if she gave the dress to Reed at once, perhaps the stains would not set.

“I know who you are,” said Wrigley curtly, startling Sarah with an abrupt lift of his head, his keen eyes meeting hers with astonishing directness. “Who you are and what you’re bent on.”

“I beg your pardon!” Sarah might not be the haughty sort, but no servant she ever encountered had addressed her with this sort of insolence, much less accused her of anything.

A wave of something passed over Wrigley’s countenance in a series of clenches and grimaces. Then he lowered his head once more to his task, but he muttered, “You heard me. I know you’ve set your cap for Mr. Langworthy, thinking you’ve a right to him because you were his friend’s widow.”

Gasping, Sarah tugged her dress from Wrigley’s clutch and leapt to her feet. “Who are you? How dare you speak thus? How do you know Mr. Langworthy?”

The boy twitched. Glanced at Blodgett (who bore the look with sleepy equanimity). Then he folded the cloth, hung it on the side of the basin, and rose. They did not stand eye to eye—Sarah was perhaps two inches taller—but the very act—its audacity—put her at a disadvantage.

“I’m a servant of Miss Mary Pence of Portsmouth, sent here by her to find out what’s what,” said Wrigley. “As is that one there.” (Pointing at Blodgett.) “I daresay you’ve heard of Miss Pence?”

Sarah swallowed, using every ounce of resolve not to take a step backward, not to reveal anything on her face. “I have,” she replied.

“Mr. Langworthy is my mistress’ intended husband—”

“Was,” she interrupted. “Mr. Langworthy was once engaged to Miss Pence.”

Wrigley’s Harry-Barbaryish eyes glittered. “Was,” he conceded. “But it was her choice to jilt him, and not his. Because he’s wild in love with her and always has been. Always. It crushed him when she broke it off.”

What sort of young lady tells her servant these things? marveled Sarah. She could not imagine confiding in Reed or Irving at Iffley Cottage, and they were miracles of discretion compared to this Wrigley!

“Only then,” resumed the footboy, “when he was beaten down and in the depths of despair, did he remember his dead friend asked him to pay a visit here, and so he came, all…suffering and—and tender-like, and what do we see but he got himself taken advantage of.”

“Poor helpless creature,” Sarah said dryly, despite her distress. She wrapped her arms about herself for courage. “I take it, if she sent you to spy upon him—upon all of us—your mistress has changed her mind about jilting him?”

“She might have,” returned Wrigley. “But one thing is for certain: it’s despicable to try to steal other girls’ beaux and twice as much so for those who already had their turn and got a husband and a baby from it.

Those ones ought to content themselves with their widderhood like the Scripture says, or, if they can’t stand it, keep their chasing after fellows to ones like that old Dr. Rearden. ”

“Stealing other girls’ beaux”? To stand and be told to mind the Scriptures?

Goaded, Sarah’s urge to argue with the maddening servant warred with the knowledge that she should not dignify such slander with a response.

But, oh, how she wanted to! That this snip of a would-be footboy should be allowed to make such speeches with impunity, even if bidden to do so by his mistress!

Her arms tightened around herself, and she knew she was red as a brick.

But it was not pride alone which silenced Sarah; it was that Wrigley’s arrows had struck home.

For what did it matter if Mary Pence was fickle and possessive, or if she employed low, unworthy tactics and low, impudent servants like Wrigley, if in truth Mr. Langworthy was “wild in love” with the girl and always had been?