“What’s that for? To keep your brains from bursting through?” demanded her brother crossly. But Theodora only tossed that yellow posy of a head of hers, retorting that Major Montresor thought she was sixteen, and was going to sit next her, and that there would be a surprise at dinner!
* * * * *
The surprise—or the series of surprises—didn’t dawn upon me in its full hideousness all at once.
In the dim-shaded dining-room, where the tall maids flitted noiselessly to and from the hatch at one end, the round table about which the seven of us sat down seemed, with its many candles in the curving arms of Sheffield candlesticks, its gleaming white porcelain, and its winking, patterned array of silver and cut glass, like some great oasis of softly-radiant light. Upon it, as table-centre, there was set the silver-bordered pool of an oval mirror, reflecting a large silver goblet, round which I could read part of the inscription:
1896
FIFTY YARDS SWIM——
SECS. 6——
W. WAT——
that upheld a pyramid of creamy, perfumed blossom, softened with sprays of feathery white. Budding spikes of the same blossom were massed about the pedestals of four little winged Loves, offering baskets that held tiny bouquets of the white sprays, mingled with chocolates wrapped up in silver-foil. Gradually but surely I realized the effect of all this decoration; it was indescribably, unmistakably, blatantly—bridal!
And then I realized who was responsible for it. That gift of Heaven, Theodora, was beaming upon her handiwork.
It must have been her innocent hands, too, that had tied up each table-napkin with a white bow and a spray of buds; had cut silver-paper out of a chocolate-box into the miniature horseshoes that lay strewn negligently but broadcast all over the tablecloth; and had encircled the place where I sat with a wreath of crystallized rose-leaves in the shape of a heart.
With one frantic sweep of my hand I brushed these last into the table-napkin on my lap. I must pretend I’d noticed nothing, and then (though I knew that thunder-cloud was deepening every moment on the Governor’s brow) perhaps the others really wouldn’t notice!
Vain hope!