"There's no occasion for haste if you don't want to go in just yet," said Celestine; "she isn't alone, I saw Dr. Kirby ride up just as I came away. Well—she's got on that maroon silk wrapper."
"Nobody has such taste as you have, Celestine," said Margaret, kindly. "My aunt is always becomingly dressed."
There was a little movement of the New England woman's mouth, which was almost a grimace. In reality it expressed her pride and pleasure—though no one would have suspected it. It was the only acknowledgment she made.
Dr. Kirby was sitting with his esteemed friend when Margaret entered.
His esteemed friend's feeling for Margaret now seemed to be always a tender compassion.
"My dear child, I fear you have been out too long, you look pale," was the present manifestation of it.
"I have often thought what a variation it would make in the topics of my friends," said Margaret, as she drew off her gloves, "if I should take to painting my cheeks a little; think of it—a touch of rouge, now, and the whole conversation would be altered."
"I am sure that, for artistic purposes at least," said Dr. Kirby, gallantly, "rouge would be totally misapplied. We all know that Mrs. Harold's complexion has always the purest, the most natural, the most salubrious tint; it is the whiteness of Diana."
"Pray give those—those green things to Looth," Aunt Katrina went on, languidly; "I hope they are not poison-ivy?" (Aunt Katrina lived under the impression that everything that came from the woods was poison-ivy.) "And do go to my room, dear child, and sit down there a while before the fire—there's a little fire—and let Looth change your shoes, and make you a nice cup of tea. Later—later," Aunt Katrina went on, more animatedly, "we'll have some whist." She spoke as though she were holding out something which Margaret would be sure to enjoy.
There were very few evenings now when Aunt Katrina did not expect her niece to make one at the whist-table drawn up at her couch's side, the other players being Dr. Kirby, Betty, or occasionally Madam Ruiz or Madam Giron. The game had come to be her greatest pleasure, she had therefore established and set going in her circle of friends the idea that it was an especial pleasure to Margaret also; Aunt Katrina was an adept in such tyrannies.