Even as I thought it there was a crunching of light wheels on the gravel outside. A dog-cart drove up holding khaki and the flutter of a dress.
A moment later Muriel entered. Just a bright-headed bouquet of muslin, rose-sprigged with mauve! Even as she uttered smiling greetings she made every other girl there look comparatively plain at once.
As for me, I instantly became a hopeless clodhopper sitting there in rough breeches and smock, with my thick brogues planted on the soft carpet. Awkward and out of place, all enjoyment was over for me as soon as Dick Holiday's fashionable contrast of a girl floated into the drawing-room.
The man who had driven her up came in a few moments afterwards.
To my surprise, it was Harry again! "More leave, Markham?" I heard Colonel Fielding laugh; and then Harry, "No, I just got down for the week-end."
So he had come all that way, just to be near Muriel. Oh, what it must be to have her power over men! As far as I could see, there was only one man in that party who wasn't at her little feet as she sat coquetting now with the master of the house. Elizabeth's fiancé had said, "I know too much about her! I know her kind!"
What did the young Colonel mean?
However! He didn't count; being engaged, and, as Elizabeth herself said, "not a 'usual' young man."
One thing I noticed about one of the more "usual" young men there. Harry Markham was not himself that afternoon. Something was weighing on him.
I knew it! I knew his face and ways so well. Hadn't I studied them, as only a girl in love has patience to study, for a whole year?