"Some day, when I get time, we must look through my clothes. I want to give you a lot of them.... What DOES become of the time? Here it is, nearly eleven. See if breakfast has come up. I'll finish dressing afterward if it has."
It had. It was upon a small table in the rose and gold boudoir. And the sun, shining softly in at the creeper-shaded window, rejoiced in the surpassing brightness and cleanness of the dishes of silver and thinnest porcelain and cut glass. Margaret thought eating in bed a "filthy, foreign fad," and never indulged in it. She seated herself lazily, drank her coffee, and ate her roll and her egg slowly, deliberately, reading her letters and glancing at the paper. A charming picture she made—the soft, white Valenciennes of her matinee falling away from her throat and setting off the clean, smooth healthiness of her skin, the blackness of her vital hair; from the white lace of her petticoat's plaited flounces peered one of her slim feet, a satin slipper upon the end of it. At the top of the heap of letters lay one she would have recognized, she thought, had she never seen the handwriting before.
"Sure to be upsetting," reflected she; and she laid it aside, glancing now and then at the bold, nervous, irregular hand and speculating about the contents and about the writer.
She had gone to bed greatly disturbed in mind as to whether she was doing well to marry the obstreperous Westerner. "He fascinates me in a wild, weird sort of a way when I'm with him," she had said to herself before going to sleep, "and the idea of him is fascinating in certain moods. And it is a temptation to take hold of him and master and train him—like broncho-busting. But is it interesting enough for—for marriage? Wouldn't I get horribly tired? Wouldn't Grant and humdrum be better? less wearying?" And when she awakened she found her problem all but solved. "I'll send him packing and take Grant," she found herself saying, "unless some excellent reason for doing otherwise appears. Grandmother was right. Engaging myself to him was a mood." Once more she was all for luxury and ease and calmness, for the pleasant, soothing, cut-and-dried thing. "A cold bath or a rough rub-down now and then, once in a long while, is all very well. It makes one appreciate comfort and luxury more. But that sort of thing every day—many times each day—" Margaret felt her nerves rebelling as at the stroking of velvet the wrong way.
She read all her other letters, finished her toilette, had on her hat, and was having Selina put on her boots when she opened Craig's letter and read:
"I must have been out of my mind this afternoon. You are wildly fascinating, but you are not for me. If I led you to believe that I wished to marry you, pray forget it. We should make each other unhappy and, worse still, uncomfortable.
"Do I make myself clear? We are not engaged. I hope you will marry Arkwright; a fine fellow, in every way suited to you, and, I happen to know, madly in love with you. Please try to forgive me. If you have any feeling for me stronger than friendship you will surely get over it.
"Anyhow, we couldn't marry. That is settled.
"Let me have an answer to this. I shall be upset until I hear." No beginning. No end. Just a bald, brutal casting-off. A hint—more than a hint—of a fear that she would try to hold him in spite of himself. She smiled—small, even teeth clenched and eyelids contracted cruelly—as she read a second time, with this unflattering suggestion obtruding. The humiliation of being jilted! And by such a man!—the private shame—the public disgrace—She sprang up, crunching her foot hard down upon one of Selina's hands. "What is it?" said she angrily, at her maid's cry of pain.
"Nothing, Miss," replied Selina, quickly hiding the wounded hand. "You moved so quick I hadn't time to draw away. That was all."