“As if I did not know it,” answered the sweet invalid, penitent and ashamed of the momentary cloud that had come over her. “Eva, dear, let us begin again.”
Ruth gathered up the flowers in her lap, and began to arrange them in glowing clusters, with which she looped back the over-dress.
“Now just a dash of this warm crimson for your hair, and nothing can be more lovely,” she exclaimed, pulling Eva down to her knees, and fastening a red rose and some of the mossiest buds among her braids.
When Eva arose from her knees she held the little cluster of violets in her hand. Looking wistfully down upon the blossoms, she unconsciously took a position, which filled Ruth with the enthusiasm of an artist.
“Oh, if I could paint her now!” she thought.
“Would there be any harm?” questioned Eva, in a low voice, turning her eyes wistfully from the flowers to Ruth’s glowing face. “I—I suppose he would rather expect it. Don’t you?”
Ruth smiled, and held out her hand for the flowers, but Eva pretended not to see her. Even to that gentle hand she would not, for one moment, consign the previous blossoms. So, with a gentle wile of abstraction, she placed the flowers on her bosom, which rose and swelled to their almost imperceptible touch, as waters bear lotus-flowers on their waves.
“Now, isn’t she stunning?” exclaimed James, moving in a circle, and on tiptoe, around the room, afraid of touching the snow-white train with his foot. “That Miss Spicer, who goes down the avenue to meet him, every day at three o’clock, will be nowhere. In fact, I don’t believe there’ll be a handsomer girl at the party to-night. She’s A No. I, and a picked article at that. Hallo! Who’s coming?”
James heard the outer door open, without a knock, and a heavy rustle of silk in the passage. Eva gathered up her dress, and sat down on Ruth’s couch, ashamed of her own beauty, and wondering who the intruder could be. Ruth smiled, and said,
“I dare say it is Mrs. Smith.”