"It's an old custom for welcoming a princess," he said.
The old nurse came from the kitchen, rustling in stiff print and white apron.
"Oh, Master Edward, sir," she said, beaming, "I never thought you'd come in all this rain, not even when I got the telegraph. Nicely, ma'am, thanking you kindly and hoping you're the same," she said, in answer to the greeting and the hand that the girl offered. "And your good lady, Master Edward, she must be wet through, but I've got a lovely fire in her room, if you'll come along with me, ma'am, and I'll bring up some hot water in two ticks."
So now, after the wind and the rain and the car, the girl finds herself in a long, low, chintz-curtained room where a wood fire burns on an open hearth and a devoted nurse of his is pulling off wet shoes and offering cups of tea and hot water.
"And are you quite sure there ain't nothing more I can do for you, ma'am, for I'm sure it's a pleasure?"
The girl, left alone at last, found herself wondering. He must have felt very sure of her, surely, to have brought her thus to his nurse, as if . . . as if their marriage had been a real marriage, like other people's.
"Well, and why shouldn't he be sure of me?" she asked herself. "I'm sure of him, thank God!"
The appointments about her were so charming, all so perfectly in keeping with one another and with the room that held them, that she found herself making a comfortable, complete, and ceremonious toilette. She had with her, by a fortunate accident, as she told herself, a dress of soft, cream-colored India muslin, fine as gauze. But when she looked at herself in the glass she said, "Too white . . . it's like a wedding-dress," and sought for some color to mitigate the dress's bridal simplicity. There was no scarf that quite stifled criticism, but there was the Burmese coat, long and red, with gold-embroidered hems a foot deep. She slipped it over the white gown and was satisfied.
She thought of the morning when she had last worn the Burmese coat, and "He liked the red rose," she said, as she put it on. When she was dressed she sat down in the great arm-chair before the fire and rested, tasting the simple yet perfect luxury of it all. She did not know how long she sat there, and reverie had almost given place to dreaming when a tap at the door aroused her.