"Yes, you needn't think Truie and Hester and Muriel will back you up!" continued Gowan. "Unless they're as mean as you are. There! I've finished now, so you needn't butt in! You know exactly what I think of you. Come along, Carmel!"
The two immediate results of this episode were a bitter feud between Laurette and Gowan, and a sympathetic interest in Miss Herbert by all the members of the Mafia. They felt that her confidence had been betrayed, and they would have liked somehow to make it up to her. They brought so many floral offerings to her bedroom that her vases were almost inconveniently crowded.
Carmel, hearing that she was collecting post cards, sent home for some special ones of Sicily; Dulcie tendered chocolates; Lilias crocheted her a pincushion cover, and Bertha painted her a hair-tidy. She accepted their little kindnesses with mild astonishment, but not a hint of the real reason of their sudden advances flashed across her mind.
"We mustn't let her suspect!" said Dulcie.
"Rather not!" agreed Carmel.
"Not for worlds!" said Gowan emphatically.
chapter xii
White Magic
October passed by with flaming crimson and gold on the trees, and orange and mauve toadstools among the moss of the woods, and squirrels scampering up the Scotch pines at the top of the garden, laying by their winter store of nuts; and flocks of migrating birds twittering in the fields, and hosts of glittering red hips and haws in the hedges, and shrouds of fairy gossamer over the blackberry bushes. It was Carmel's first autumn in England, and, though her artistic temperament revelled in the beauty of the tints, the falling leaves filled her with consternation.