They giggled quietly and moved away, leaving Callie staring at the foot of the column. She was shocked, not least to find that Dolly must have sent him a card for the dinner. She sat fixed to the sofa, hardly knowing where to look. Trev grinning at her over the horns of a misplaced bull and the très bon duc de Monceaux were two entirely different persons, she realized. She came to that insight with great sudden ness, on the heels of recalling that she was wearing a plain stuff gown that Hermey had cheerfully declared to be fit for a milkmaid, and her hair was unadorned except for a single ribbon in a shade of puce that Lady Shelford detested. Callie had not, when she dressed for dinner, taken any note of these opinions, because she intended to go out the barn later, but abruptly they took on a dangerous significance.

She was a spinster dowd. That was no fresh news, but she had rather a habit of forgetting it just recently, having been beguiled by the suggestion that her cheeks more closely resembled strawberries than a pudding, and the matter of certain gentlemen attempting to recover certain bulls on her behalf. But the knowledge was not something that she could afford to disregard, even under the allure of her daydreams. She and Trev were great friends, but he was indeed French. Flirtation and lovemaking were in his blood. He would say such things as he said to Callie to any lady. And now Dolly and her friend spoke of him in that horrid insinuating way, as if it were quite natural to suppose that they could share his attentions if they pleased.

Callie stood up abruptly, making her way toward the door before the violinist had even started to play. The room felt close and hot. Such a wave of resent ment and despair had possessed her that she nearly grew ill. She had to go out into the chilly air to escape from this press of elegant strangers. She hurried down the stairs to the little vestibule on the ground f loor where her cloak and muck boots awaited her. No one paid her any mind, though doubtless in the morning Lady Shelford would have some acid comment on her ungraciously early departure. Callie would say she had felt unwell. It was no more than the truth.