Alice turned her long gray eyes quickly to meet those of her companion.
"Has she really told of it?" she demanded almost fiercely.
"They were all talking of it before you came in," May responded.
Her voice was deepened, apparently by a tragic sense of the gravity of the subject under discussion; yet she was a bud in her first season, so that it was impossible that there should not also be in her tone some faint consciousness of the delightfully romantic nature of the situation.
An angry flush came into the cheek of Miss Endicott. She was not a girl of striking face, although she had beautiful eyes; but there was a dignity in her carriage, an air of birth and breeding, which gave her distinction anywhere. She possessed, moreover, a sweet sincerity of character which made itself subtly felt in her every tone and movement. Now she knit her forehead in evident perplexity and resentment.
"But did they believe it?" she asked.
"Oh, they would believe anything of Miss Wentstile, of course," May replied. "We all know Aunt Sarah too well not to know that she is capable of the craziest thing that could be thought of."
She picked out a fat bonbon as she spoke, and nibbled it comfortably, as if thoroughly enjoying herself.
"But what can I do?" demanded Alice pathetically. "I can't stand up here and say: 'Ladies and gentlemen, I really have no idea of marrying that foreign thing Aunt Sarah wants to buy for me.'"
Whatever reply May might have made was interrupted by the arrival of a gentleman with an empty teacup. The new-comer was Richard Fairfield, a young man of not much money but of many friends, and of literary aspirations. As he crossed the drawing-room Mrs. Neligage carelessly held out to him her cup and saucer.