"Pretty creature!" she murmured, half-aloud.
"I beg your pardon?" said Edred, interrupted in his disquisition.
"I was only thinking how sweet Dolly looks to-day."
"She is—" and a cold pause. "She can be—attractive."
"I should think she could! Attractive! I call her lovely!"
Thou Dorothea remembered that perhaps Dolly did not render herself attractive to Edred.
"I have seen her look lovely—as you say."
Dorothea gave him an eager glance, trying to read further. Did he really feel no more than he showed? At the same moment Mervyn and Dolly swept past again, nearer and more slowly than before. Dolly lifted her blue eyes, and gazed full at Dorothea, with a heart-sick reproachful gaze. Dorothea was startled, even confounded, by it. The look was such as she might have received from one whom she had deeply injured. But how could she have injured Dolly? Was she not studiously keeping aloof from Mervyn, for Dolly's sake, forbearing to give him a needless smile?
Edred seemed not to have noticed the little interlude. He went on without a break: "If one wanted mere prettiness, and nothing more—"
"Oh!" cried Dorothea indignantly. "You don't mean Dolly! You are not speaking of Dolly!"