"And I wonder what has happened to-day to your usually so charming temper," returns she, laughingly uplifting her face to his, and letting her eyes rest on him with almost insolent inquiry.
"Desmond says good temper is a mere matter of digestion," says some one at this moment. Monica starts more at the name mentioned than at the exceedingly worn-out words uttered. She glances at the speaker, and sees he is a very ugly young man, with a nice face, and a remarkably dismal expression. He is looking at Rossmoyne. "Sit down, dear boy," he says, sotto voce and very sadly. "There's too much of you; you should never stand. You appear to so much better advantage when doubled in two. It don't sound well, does it? but——"
"But really, when you come to think of it," Mrs. Bohun is saying, feelingly, "there is very little in the country."
"There is at least the fascinating tulip and lily," says the sad man who mentioned Desmond's name. "Don't put yourself beyond the pale of art by saying you had forgotten those æsthetic flowers,—blossoms, I mean. Don't you yearn when you think of them? I do."
"So glad you are awake at last, Owen!" says Mrs. Bohun.
"That silly craze about tulips," says Mrs. Herrick, contemptuously, "I have always treated it with scorn. Why could not the art idiots have chosen some better flower for their lunatic ravings? What can any one see in a tulip?"
"Sometimes earwigs," says the man called Owen.
"Nonsense! I don't believe even earwigs would care for it. Foolish, gaudy thing, uplifting its lanky neck as though to outdo its fellows! There is really nothing in it."
"Like the country," says Owen, meekly, "according to Mrs. Bohun."
"And like Bella Fitzgerald," says that graceless person, with a little grimace.