"Cedric kissed her—I saw him."
"Then," said Alex, "it was perfectly hateful of him and of Marie and of you."
"Why of me?" shrieked Barbara in a high key of indignation. "What have I done, I should like to know?"
"You'd no business to say anything about it. Put out the candle, Barbara, I'm going to get into bed."
In the darkness Alex lay with her mind in a tumult. It seemed to her incredible that her brother, whom she had always supposed to despise every form of sentimentality, as he did any display of feeling on the part of his family, should have wanted to kiss little, red-haired Marie, whom he had only known for one day, and who was by far the least pretty of any of the three Munroe sisters. "And to kiss her in the shrubbery like that!"
Alex felt disgusted and indignant. She thought about it for a long while before she went to sleep, although she would gladly have dismissed the incident from her mind. Most of all, perhaps, she was filled with astonishment. Why should any one want to kiss Marie Munroe?
In the depths of her heart was another wonder which she never formulated even to herself, and of which she would, for very shame, have strenuously denied the existence.
Why had she not the same mysterious attraction as un-beautiful little Marie? Alex knew instinctively that it would never have occurred, say, to Noel Cardew—to ask her if he might kiss her. She did not want him to—would have been shocked and indignant at the mere idea—but, unconsciously, she wished that he had wanted to.