"Oh, but I want you to—I particularly want you to," insisted the other, creating, as she rose, a lovely commotion by the flutter of her lace veil and her ostrich feathers. "I send him my liveliest congratulations, and the part he'll like best is that I am able to send them by you."
The door closed softly after her, and Gerty, going to the window, threw it open with a bang which served as an outlet to the emotion she lacked either the courage or the opportunity to put into words.
"I don't like her perfume," she observed, with an affected contortion of her nostrils, "there's something to be said for the odour of sanctity, after all."
"Why, I thought it delicious," returned Laura, as if astonished. "It even occurred to me to ask her where she got it."
"Well, I'm thankful you didn't," exclaimed Gerty; and she concluded dismally after a moment, "What hurts me most is to think I've wasted bouquets on her over the footlights, for a more perfectly odious person—"
"I found her wonderfully handsome," remarked Laura, in a voice which had a curious quality of remoteness, as if she spoke from some dream-like state of mental abstraction. "Wonderfully handsome," she insisted, indignant at the scornful denial in Gerty's look.
"Well, it's the kind of handsomeness that makes me want to scratch her in the face," rejoined Gerty, with the unshakable courage of her impressions.
Turning away from her friend, Laura went over to the desk as if drawn in spite of her resolution, by the large sealed envelope lying on the white blotter. The handwriting of the address, with its bold, free flourish at the end, appeared to fascinate her eyes, for after looking at it attentively a moment, she took it up and brought it over to the hearth where Gerty stood.
"Yes, she is wonderfully handsome," she repeated; and her tone was so indifferent that it came with a shock of surprise to Gerty, when she bent over and laid the letter upon the burning logs. Dropping on her knees, she watched the paper catch fire, redden in the flame, turn to ashes, and at last dissolve in smoke. Then she leaned forward and pushed the logs together, as if she wished to destroy some last vestige of the words which were still visible to her eyes.
"Laura!" called Gerty sharply. She had made a step forward, but as Laura rose from her knees and faced her, she fell back into her former attitude.