Isabelle elevated her eyebrows with a look of horror.
Louis laughed. "She's a hopeless case, Isabelle. You'll never convert her into an elegant trifler. You might as well throw up the contract."
"It seems to me, Evadne," said his sister icily, "that you might have a little regard for the decorums of society. Don't, I beg of you, give utterance to such heresies before the girls. And I wish you would not call it my Bible. I did not make it."
"That is quite true, Evadne," said Louis gravely. "If she had, there would have been a good deal left out."
Isabella shot an angry glance at him but made no remark. Her brother's sarcasms were always received in silence.
"Eva," she said after a pause, "I intend to call you by that name in future,—your full one is too troublesome."
Evadne shivered. Her father was the only one who had ever abbreviated her name. "I shall not answer to it," she said quietly.
"Why, pray?"
"Because, I suppose, in common with the rest of the lower animals, I have a natural repugnance to being cut in two."
"How tiresome you are!" exclaimed Isabelle with a pout. "I do not object to my first syllable. All the girls at school call me Isa. Mamma, did you remember to order the tulle for our wings? Claude Rivers has finished hers and they are perfectly sweet. She showed them to me this afternoon."