“Oh, you renegade!” exclaimed St. George in mock alarm.
“Yes,—a positive disgrace! He'll never marry anybody, Sue, until he marries me. I've begged him on my knees until I'm tired, to name the day, and he won't! Just like all you shiftless Marylanders, sir—never know when to make up your minds.”
“But you threw me over, Lavinia, and broke my heart,” laughed Temple with a low bow, his palms flattened against his waistcoat in assumed humility.
“When?”
“Oh, twenty years ago.”
“Oh, my goodness gracious! Of course I threw you over then;—you were just a baby in arms and I was old enough to be your mother—but now it's different. I'm dying to get married and nobody wants me. If you were a Virginian instead of a doubting Marylander, you would have asked me a hundred times and kept on asking until I gave in. Now it's too late. I always intended to give in, but you were so stupid you couldn't or wouldn't understand.”
“It's never too late to mend, Lavinia,” he prayed with hands extended.
“It's too late to mend you, St. George! You are cracked all over, and as for me—I'm ready to fall to pieces any minute. I'm all tied up now with corset laces and stays and goodness knows what else. No—I'm done with you.”
While this merry badinage was going on, the young people crowding the closer so as not to lose a word, or making room for the constant stream of fresh arrivals on their way toward the dressing-rooms above, their eyes now and then searching the top of the stairs in the hope of getting the first glimpse of Kate, our heroine was receiving the final touches from her old black mammy. It took many minutes. The curl must be adjusted, the full skirts pulled out or shaken loose, the rare jewels arranged before she was dismissed with—“Dah, honey chile, now go-long. Ain't nary one on 'em ain't pizen hongry for ye—any mos' on 'em 'll drown derselves 'fo' mawnin' becos dey can't git ye.”
She is ready now, Harry beside her, her lace scarf embroidered with pink rosebuds floating from her lovely shoulders, her satin skirt held firmly in both hands that she might step the freer, her dainty silk stockings with the ribbons crossed about her ankles showing below its edge.