Miss Spicer walked toward him, grasping her parasol as if it had been a spear, with which she meant to pierce him through.
“Now, this is too bad, after all the pains I have taken! Come along, I say.”
Lambert turned from the window and followed his tormentor. He did not even glance at Eva Laurence.
“Mother, I have an engagement; pray, excuse me.”
“An engagement—gone! The idea!”
With this exclamation, Miss Spicer turned from the girl she had tortured, and the cloak she did not want, with a gesture of the hand, meant to indicate that she had done with the whole affair, and became all at once impatient to leave the establishment.
Mrs. Lambert, who had concluded her purchase, and had been standing an amused spectator of her friend’s defeat, was now ready to go; and Eva saw them depart with a feeling of resentful humiliation, which brought a hot red to her cheeks, and mingled fire and tears to her eyes.
“You find it hard,” said a voice at her elbow. “We all rebel at first; but time and patience do wonders.”
The person who spoke was a slight, dark-eyed man, about thirty-five or forty years of age, whose low, kind voice fell gently on her disturbed senses.
“Yes, it is hard,” answered Eva; and the tears that had been gathering in her eyes flashed over the vivid red of her cheeks, and melted there like dew upon a peach. “I did not expect this—I thought that ladies alone would claim my services.”