"It is not mine, but your son's. He was here about an hour ago and must have dropped it."
"I thought he had gone out over the grounds with Clinton. What brought him here?"
"He came to scold me for not shaking hands with his cousin."
"Indeed! you must have been singularly rude if he noticed any want of courtesy. Change your dress and come down."
It was in vain that Edna bathed her hot face and pressed her cold hands to her cheeks. She felt as if all curious eyes read her troubled heart. She was ashamed to meet the family—above all things to see Mr. Murray. Heretofore she had shunned him from dislike; now she wished to avoid him because she began to feel that she loved him, and because she dreaded that his inquisitorial eyes would discover the contemptible, and, in her estimation, unwomanly weakness.
Taking the basket which contained her sewing utensils and a piece of light needlework, she went into the parlor and seated herself near the centre-table, over which hung the chandelier.
Mr. Murray and his mother were sitting on a sofa, the former engaged in cutting the leaves of a new book, and Estelle Harding was describing in glowing terms a scene in "Phedre," which owed its charm to Rachel's marvelous acting. As she repeated the soliloquy beginning:
"O toi, qui vois la honte ou je suis descendue, Implacable Venus, suis—je assez confondue!" Edna felt as if her own great weakness were known to the world, and she bent her face close to her basket and tumbled the contents into inextricable confusion.
To-night Estelle seemed in unusually fine spirits, and talked on rapidly, till St. Elmo suddenly appeared to become aware of the import of her words, and in a few trenchant sentences he refuted the criticism on Phedre, advising his cousin to confine her comments to dramas with which she was better acquainted.
His tone and manner surprised Mr. Allston, who remarked: