“I don’t want to marry any one,” returned Olivia; “and I am not waiting for any one.”
“Well, I’m glad of it!” exclaimed Aunt Amelia, driven snappish by her disappointment. “Because if you are waiting for—for——”
“Well?” demanded Olivia, her eyes beginning to flash and her little foot to beat the carpet; by which sign the intelligent reader will understand how perfectly restored she was.
“Well, my dear, don’t look as if you meant to eat me. All I meant to say was that he doesn’t seem as if he were coming, or as if—if he meant to come.”
“I—I don’t know what you mean!” exclaimed Olivia.
Then she burst into tears, which seemed to indicate that after all she had some inkling whom Aunt Amelia intended by “he.”
She dried her tears very quickly, and went to dress for a ball; quite “a quiet affair,” with only about two hundred guests.
She had never looked more lovely than she looked that night, and had never shone more brilliantly. The romantic story, the more than rumored proposal of the prince, attracted all attention to her; and everybody of note—and there were some famous personages there—begged for an introduction to the beautiful, young English girl.
Suddenly she grew tired, and sent her rejected suitor—who could not tear himself away from her, notwithstanding his rejection—for her father.
“Take me home, papa,” she said in a low voice.