“Oh, it’s no use reproving me! If I am old enough to play cards with you, I’m old enough to criticise the way you play your hands.”
“Corinne, be quiet. I am speaking to Mrs. Mearely. I fear I’ve spoiled you by making such a companion of you. You should be in the schoolroom.”
“But, I’m not!” Corinne cried, merrily. She was thinking little of what she said; for her eyes, round as saucers, were devouring Rosamond in her rose-and-silver trappings.
“Isn’t Mrs. Mearely too beautiful for words to-night?” she whispered into her cousin’s ear.
“Who is she to have everything? Any one could be beautiful in such a frock,” was the bitter reply.
Corinne’s arm went round Mabel’s slim waist. She whispered again:
“You look beautiful, too—even if your dress is plainer than hers. When I am twenty-one, and mamma gives me some of the handsome things out of the big box, I’m going to divide everything half and half with you.”
“Oh, Corinne!” she smiled. “Perhaps, when you’re twenty-one, you won’t want to divide.”
“I’ll want to, more! Because I’ll be three and a half years fonder of you than I am now.”
Seeing Mr. Howard manœuvring his greetings so that he could conclude them naturally at Mabel’s side, Corinne withdrew. She was a pretty little creature, plump, rosy, and lively. Her white muslin frock, the work of her cousin’s clever fingers, set off her black, curly hair and big, bright brown eyes. Mrs. Taite could never have cast her doubts upon Corinne in her muslins, for the guileless heart made itself evident in all her words and acts. One surmised—from her buoyancy and sweetness of temper, and a native thoughtfulness she had for the sensibilities of others—that her father, the late Jameson Witherby, Esquire, had taken a good disposition away from earth with him when he had quitted the side of his Emma—until that day when an overworked Providence (meaning only to be systematic, not unkind) should re-unite them for all eternity.