Scarlett came back inside, and took the staircase to meet Mammy, hands on hips, glaring down at her while the Tarleton mammy made tracks.

"Miss Scarlett, huccome you not wit' de other girls?"

Scarlett cleared her throat, and laid her hands upon her hoops as though Mammy would not be an impediment towards her returning to that room, as though she were a mere mirage to pass through.

"Now Mammy, I know you have my concerns at heart… "

"Huh! Don' go given' me dat. Get up in dere 'fore I 'cide you is better off goin' home to Miss Ellen."

Scarlett, shocked as only such an admonition should pronounce, should provide weight to Mammy's warning, and the approbation sure to be seen in Mammy's face as a smirk of satisfaction, only resulted in a frown.

"I knows you, Miss Scarlett. You have Miss Ellen's face but you lakh a chile, and you can't go hidin' on me."

Scarlett sat in the stifling room, hearing the horses neigh and more for having seen them, the yearning to join them, as at last Cathleen roused, and then Randa Tarleton, and soon all the girls in a great delight for the ball to come, adjusted and assured themselves of all that was prompt and quick.

"Scarlett," Careen followed her out of the room and down the staircase, "Did you sleep a wink? I'm not sure I did."

"Of course," Scarlett stifled a yawn, and caught Mammy's upraised eyebrows as they took to the staircase, all a bevy of delighted, beautiful girls flouncing, "Who, Caroline, will you dance with to-night?"

Careen blushed, "Well - Katie - "

At this Scarlett frowned, for having her rules thrust upon her.

" - if you'll permit me to begin calling you that. I do so hope I am asked to dance."

Careen saw over where the Tarleton boys, having not been apprised of a nap, lacked no vigor for not indulging in one.

The room set aside for dancing, and all that Beatrice might tsk and fluster about her Nellie in the yard, commandeered with all the ferocity of a marshal that music and those slaves to help, as begin a cordial atmosphere where those gentlemen did pick their partners and soon the music did begin.

Scarlett, standing to one side with Careen who had not been picked, nor Suellen for Mr Kennedy did not feature in his imagination that anybody might like to dance with him, formed the triplet of O'Hara sisters left out of the limelight, which to Cathleen's eye she kept her eyes to her partner, and India Wilkes managing a straight face, and Honey Wilkes who was much enamoured with Charles, if he only slightly discomfited by the match.

Scarlett, watching the dances and pleasantly enamoured of the scene playing out, kept her back straight, her smile pleasant, and her attention focused, for though all of it, for all the appearance of being like Ellen, it strained her that she did not quite know how to inhabit it wholly.

For India Wilkes, her cool placid ladylike demeanour, knew no equal; and it occurred to Scarlett, that wanting to be like Ellen, and desirous of the behaviour which should convince others, the fact of that was slowly becoming plain that she was a copycat, and perhaps her ministrations laid bare.

"Oh, but what a sop," thought Scarlett, "What else is the essence of Ellen, her character, her strength? Is it nothing more than keeping my back from slouching at a chair? But all girls in the County are bred to be this way. And my grandmother Solange would have whipped the most rebellious girl in her care and so did Ellen perform to exacting standards. Is it her heartbreak? Is Ellen so hollow, that with no spirit to fill it, with no lust or urges, there can only be an enduring habit of obedience and humility?"

Obedience and humility, Scarlett thoughts as she watched the dancers twirl and could consider it nothing more than a distraction for her to ponder her thoughts, were best practised, but she did not truly know them. If she acted a particular way, a result would follow - that on their own, such values credited humanity and understanding to many people from the outside, evaded her.

And to that end, Scarlett spying Charles coming to the end of his dance with Honey, she was quickly reminded of her affiliation with Melanie, and that if Ellen was the ideal looking from the outside, Melanie surely inhabited all the love and hope that could surely fill the void which Scarlett knew was deep and hungry in her.

"Melanie must know - she has a heart of gold, and knows only good in people," Scarlett mused, watching Charles wipe his brow, with eyes like a calf, "But how does she do it? It is no artifice of hers. Yet - I could not deceive myself. How can one let the good in, while remaining intolerant of those who would seek to hurt you, even from laughter covered by a gloved hand?

Scarlett, who for the whole ball received no offers to dance, and Suellen one, and Careen being kept a close watch by Mammy, thought on it as they made their back into the carriage to Tara, that it was her being like Ellen that kept them away.

"No one in Savannah was courageous enough but Pa," considered Scarlett, bouncing on the ruts which saw to the end of Fairhill in the rear, and the stretching lane which now wound towards Tara, cool fresh home, "Ellen would never have been asked to dance. She was just that above everyone else."

But, Scarlett considered, the pride she figured in Ellen was more to the artifice she constructed in herself of being Ellen. And with Ellen having no pride, and Scarlett on shaky grounds as to how this construct might remain, realised the fact of the matter remained the same: whatever the cause, she, Scarlett, was not asked to dance.

"I won't think on that now," Scarlett huffed, and made a mention of Suellen to begin a whispered diatribe with Careen on these mutterings of her sister's which she could make no sense, "I must write to Melanie. Yes - it wouldn't have been proper to approach Charles, or even Ashley. Perhaps - perhaps I must go to Atlanta. Though heavens what Mother or Mammy will think. Perhaps - yes. I will see my aunt Pittypat. That can be the surest way that no suspicion will be raised."

Scarlett convinced herself that a guise was necessary, in the carriage with her sisters and Mammy and the horses leading them up the path to Tara, and feared most that she would be laughed at if it were found she was trying to better herself; however warm it might make Ellen to know the truth of it.