“I am delighted to have such sweet flowers now,” she cried, as she observed, with critical eyes, the effect of a bit of flaming crimson—an orchid suggesting a flamingo in flight—over the turquoise edge of the bowl. “I am delighted, because I have a prospect of other visitors beside yourself, my lord.”
“Other visitors?” said he. He wondered if he might venture to suggest to her the inadvisability of entertaining other visitors during her father’s absence.
“Other visitors indeed,” she replied. “I did not tell you yesterday all that I had to tell. I forget now what we talked about yesterday. How did we put in our time?”
She looked up with laughing eyes across the bowl of flowers, that she held up to her face.
“I don’t forget—I shall never forget,” said he, in a low voice.
“You must never forget,” said she. “But to my visitors—who are they, do you fancy? Don’t try to guess, for if you should succeed I should be too mortified to be able to tell you that you were right. I will tell you now. Three days ago—while we were still on the Continent—Miss Craven called. She promised faithfully to do so at Castle Innisfail—indeed, she suggested doing so herself; and I found her card waiting for me on my return with a few words scrawled on it, to tell me that she would return in some days. I don’t think that anything should be in the same bowl with a Eucharis lily—even the Venus-hair fern looks out of place beside it.”
She had strayed from her firebrand orchids to the white lilies.
“You are quite right, indeed,” said he. “A lily and you stand alone—you make everything else in the world seem tawdry.”
“That is not the message of the lily,” said she. “But supposing that Miss Craven should call upon me to-day—would you be glad of such a third person to our party?”
“I should kill her, if she were a thousand times Helen Craven,” said he, with a laugh. “But she is only one visitor; who are the others?”