The surgeon could not be there till four o'clock in the morning by which time care would have been taken to remove the signs of the ball; but if there was reason to send for a London surgeon, then also was there reason for hope;--and if there were ground for hope, then the desirability of putting off the ball was very much reduced.

"He's at the furthest end of the corridor," the Lord said to his sister, "and won't hear a sound of the music." Though the man were to die why shouldn't the people dance?
Had the Major been dying three or four miles off, at the hotel at Rufford, there would only have been a few sad looks, a few shakings of the head, and the people would have danced without any flaw in their gaiety.

Had it been known at Rufford Hall that he was lying at that moment in his mortal agony at Aberdeen, an exclamation or two,--"Poor Caneback!"-- "poor Major!"-- would have been the extent of the wailing, and not the pressure of a lover's hand would have been lightened, or the note of a fiddle delayed.

And nobody in that house really cared much for Caneback.

He was not a man worthy of much care.