She looked, as though fascinated, at the bunch of white flowers in my bosom. I took care to let her know that Lord Lumley had given them to me. I am never so gracious to him as in her presence.
"By the by, mother," he said, during a pause in the conversation, "I have noticed that, while you use every other color of hyacinths for table decorations, you never use any white ones. Why is it?"
She looked at her husband. I saw their eyes meet across the table, and that look told me how near the past was to their thoughts.
"It is a flower I do not care for, Lumley," she said quietly. "The perfume is too faint. Besides, they are so suggestive of funerals."
"Perhaps you would prefer my not wearing mine, then," I remarked carelessly. "I will throw them away."
I saw him bite his lip and frown, and I laughed to myself. Lady St. Maurice was hesitating.
"I should be sorry for you to do that," she said. "Groves can take them away until after dinner, if you would not mind."
"They are scarcely worth keeping," I went on, drawing them from my corsage. "I care nothing for them after all," and opening the window just behind my chair, I threw them into the darkness.
Lord Lumley came to me in the drawing room afterward.
"It was scarcely kind of you to throw my flowers away," he said, bending over my chair.