"You are late, my Karen, and you had no business to take out Victor at this hour. If you want to walk with him let it be in the afternoon. Aïe! aïe! Louise! what are you doing? Have mercy I beg of you!" Louise had used the file awkwardly. "What is that you have, Karen?" Madame von Marwitz went on. Miss Woodruff held in her hand a large bouquet enveloped in white paper.
"An offering, Tante; they just arrived as I came in. Roses, I think."
"I have already sent half a dozen boxes downstairs for Mrs. Forrester to dispose of in the drawing-room. You will take off your things now, child, and help me, please, with all these weary people. Bon Dieu! do they really imagine that I am going to answer their inept effusions?"
Miss Woodruff had unwrapped a magnificent bunch of pink roses and laid them beside her guardian. "From that good little dark-faced lady of yesterday, Tante."
Madame von Marwitz, pausing meditatively over a note, glanced at them. "The dark-faced lady?"
"Don't you remember? Mrs. Harding. Here is her card. She sat and gazed at you, so devoutly, while you talked to Mr. Drew and Lady Campion. And she looked very poor. It must mean a great deal for her to buy roses in January—un suprême effort," Miss Woodruff quoted, she and her guardian having a host of such playful allusions.
"I see her now," said Madame von Marwitz. "I see her face; congestionnée d'émotion, n'est-ce-pas." She read the card that Karen presented.
"Silly woman. Take them away, child."
"But no, Tante, it is not silly; it is very touching, I think; and you have liked pink roses sometimes. It makes me sorry for that good little lady that you shouldn't even look at her roses."
"No. I see her. Dark red and very foolish. I do not like her or her flowers. They look stupid flowers—thick and pink, like fat, smiling cheeks. Take them away."