"No, thank you." He is a little distrait, and is following Lilian's movements with his eyes, who has risen, thrown up the window, and is now standing upon the balcony outside, gazing upon the slumbering flowers, and upon the rippling, singing brooks in the distance, the only things in all creation that never seem to sleep.
After a while, tiring of inanimate nature, she turns her face inward and leans against the window-frame, and being in an idle mood, begins to pluck to pieces the flower that has rested during dinner upon her bosom.
Standing thus in the half light, she looks particularly fair, and slight, and childish,—
"A lovely being, scarcely formed or moulded,
A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded."
Some thought crossing Lady Chetwoode's mind, born of the long and loving glance she has been bestowing upon Lilian, she says:
"How I detest fat people. They make me feel positively ill. Mrs. Boileau, when she called to-day, raised within me the keenest pity."
"She is a very distressing woman," says Guy, absently. "One feels thankful she has no daughter."
"Yes, indeed; the same thought occurred to me. Though perhaps not fat now, she would undoubtedly show fatal symptoms of a tendency toward it later on. Now you, my dear Lilian, have happily escaped such a fate: you will never be fat."
"I'm sure I hope not, if you dislike the idea so much," says Lilian, amused, letting the ghastly remains of her ill-treated flower fall to the ground.