But Keith did not attend, though he heard the wheezing of fiddles and the shouting and stamping of Terpsichore's guests deep into the night.
Keith was too much engrossed for the next few days in looking about him for work and getting himself as comfortably settled as possible to think of anything else.
If, however, he forgot the "only decent-looking woman in Gumbolt," she did not forget him.

The invitation of a sovereign is equivalent to a command the world over; and Terpsichore was as much the queen regnant of Gumbolt as Her Majesty, Victoria, was Queen of England, or of any other country in her wide realm.

She was more; she was absolute.

She could have had any one of a half-dozen men cut the throat of any other man in Gumbolt at her bidding.
The mistress of the "Dancing Academy" had not forgotten her boast.

The institution over which she presided was popular enough almost to justify her wager.