She went and stood by the bedside, taking up the things one by one, touching up frills of lace and smoothing out tucks.
"Doesn't it make you happy to look at them?" she said.
"You look at them," said Hester, staring at her, "as if the sight of them made you hungry, or as if you had bought them for yourself."
Emily turned slightly away. She said nothing. For a few moments there was a dead silence.
Hester spoke again. What in the world was it in the mere look of the tall, straight body of the woman to make her feel hot and angered?
"If you had bought them for yourself," she persisted, "they would be worn by a Marquis of Walderhurst."
Emily laid down the robe she had been holding. She put it on the bed, and turned round to look at Hester Osborn with serious eyes.
"They may be worn by a Marquis of Walderhurst, you know," she answered. "They may."
She was remotely hurt and startled, because she felt in the young woman something she had felt once or twice before, something resentful in her thoughts of herself, as if for the moment she represented to her an enemy.
The next moment, however, Hester Osborn fell upon her with embraces.