“And she hasn’t seen him for nearly twenty years,” Palametta ruminated. “Oh, come now, Mrs. Mearely! Why can’t you be as frank about your interest in the newcomer as we are? Tell us his real age,” she tittered icily.
Rosamond’s bosom swelled and her hands clenched as the flame of anger scorched her. It burned the more fiercely because she was, for the moment, wholly at the mercy of the spinsterial dozen. She could not force them to believe her: nay, it would appear that the only way to change the “girls” of Roseborough from foes into friends again was to return to the raiment of Niobe.
“I am sorry, but I must ask you to excuse me.” She tried to say it with the dignity of the Mearely name and Villa Rose behind her; “Mrs. Witherby and the Wellses and Mrs. Lee are coming in for cards this evening. And I must prepare for them. Amanda and Jemima are away for the day, and I have everything to do.”
“Shall you wear colours at Mrs. Lee’s breakfast to-morrow?” a MacMillan demanded.
“Yes! That is what we all want to know,” a Pelham-Hew added.
As usual Rosamond’s sense of humour overcame her anger.
“I will compromise the matter if you will only run away now, like good girls,” she answered, laughing a little in spite of herself. “I will wear white—no ribbons. So put on your fanciest sashes and catch the poor old chap fast in the bow knots.”
“Oh! Mrs. Mearely!” Elspeth MacMillan ejaculated, catching the infection of Rosamond’s mirth, and smiling. “Of course—we only meant—we think it would be so nice to have another man at parties.”
“So that we won’t always have to dance together all our lives,” the Pelham-Hews choired.
“Make a circle around him and pin your sash ends to him as if he were a maypole; then, at the signal, all run in different directions and see which gets him—or the biggest piece of him.”