“No, thanks. I should have asked Grant, you know,” replied Camelia, her elbows still on the dressing-table. She absently watched Mary lift her discarded gown from the floor, fold it, and lay it neatly over the back of a chair. “Don’t mind about picking up those things, Mary,” she added, yawning a little, and wishing rather that Mary would go. “Grant can do all that.”
“I like to tidy up after you.” Mary’s smile was slightly forced. “See, Camelia, you need me to look after you—your pearl necklace under a chair.”
“It must have caught in my bodice,” said Camelia, glancing at the necklace as Mary laid it on the dressing-table. “That certainly was stupid of me. Thanks, dear.” Mary still lingered.
“You don’t want anything, you are sure? You feel quite well—and—happy, Camelia?” The question was so odd that Camelia turned her head and looked up, surprised, at Mary’s rather embarrassed countenance.
“Happy?” she repeated.
“Yes; I fancied you might have something to tell me.” This initiative was certainly amazing in the reserved Mary, and Camelia stared.
“Something to tell you?” Then her deliberate departure for the moonlit tête-à-tête with Sir Arthur coming luminously to her mind, she began to laugh. “Why, Mary, did you come in a congratulatory mood?”
Mary’s badly mastered nervousness melted somewhat. “Oh, Camelia—may I?” her face lighted to an almost charming eagerness—a charm that our æsthetic heroine was quick to recognize. “May I?”
“May you? No, you little goose,” Camelia said good-humoredly. “Upon my word, Mary, you should have had your portrait painted at that moment; you never looked so—significant. Are you so anxious to get rid of me then?” The charming look had crumbled into inextricable confusion.
“Oh, Camelia, how can you?—how could you think——?”