"I didn't dance with her," Ford pointed out, a little too quickly. This wasn't even the sort of party where there was much dancing, anyway; it was too crowded in the house for there to be room for much more than talking and drinking. Maybe he ought to be glad for that. If there had been dancing, Miss Belby might have suggested the pair of them dance together, and he might have agreed before he'd caught on, and then they would have been stuck together through the end of the dance. She certainly wouldn't have enjoyed that. Once they'd come to understand each other, she couldn't have fled the conversation any faster.

"I just... didn't catch on as quickly as I should have," he explained. "I guess really it's that I let her embarrass herself, without meaning to."