“But, aunt, who sent them?”
“Oh, it’s no use to ask me, my dear,” exclaimed Miss Philippa. “There may be a wicked little note inside. I don’t know. I don’t understand such things. They are beyond me.”
“Oh yes, quite beyond us, my dear,” said Miss Isabella; and she laid her hand upon her side as she felt a curious little palpitation, and there was a pathetic sadness in her withered face, as she began thinking of Captain Glen.
“But somebody must have sent them, aunties,” said Marie, who dropped into the diminutive, and slightly endearing, appellative quite naturally, now that she found herself being exalted by her relatives.
“Oh yes, my dears, of course—of course,” said Miss Philippa: “someone must have sent them. Mind,” she cried, shaking one finger, “I don’t say that those beautiful, those lovely exotics were sent to you by Lord Henry Moorpark. And I don’t say—no: you don’t say, sister—”
“Yes, of course,” cried Miss Isabella, clumsily taking up the cue given to her, and shaking her thin finger very slightly, for it shook itself naturally a good deal, “I don’t say, Clotilde, my dear, that that delicious and most expensive bouquet was sent by the great wealthy Mr Elbraham; but I’ve a very shrewd suspicion. Haven’t you, sister?”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” cried Miss Philippa playfully. “A little bird at dear Lady Littletown’s whispered a little something in my ear. But it’s very, very shocking, isn’t it, sister?”
“Oh yes,” cried Miss Isabella, repeating her sad little laugh, her head nodding very much the while; “but fie—fie—fie! Hush—hush—hush! Here is Joseph coming to change the plates.”
Joseph it was, and as he changed the plates Clotilde held her bouquet to her flushed cheeks in turn, and gazed at Marie, who held the flowers to her own cheeks, both of which were creamy white as some of the blossoms; and she, too, gazed rather curiously at her sister, trying to read her meaning in her eyes.
But nobody paid any heed to Ruth, who looked wistfully at the gorgeous colours in Clotilde’s bouquet, and the delicate tints in that of Marie, and she could not help wishing that someone sent her flowers—someone, say, like Captain Glen. Then she thought of Mr Montaigne, and she shivered, she hardly knew why, as she asked herself whether she ought not to have told her aunts of his visit and his ways. Then her thoughts were brought back to the happy present by Joseph placing a large section of “roley-poley” pudding before her upon a plate—not the ordinary homely “roley-poley” pudding, with flaky pastry and luscious gushings of the sweetest jam; but a peculiarly hard, mechanical style of compound which kept its shape, and in which the preserve presented itself in a rich streak of pink, starting from the centre, and winding round and round to the circumference, as if cook had turned artist, and was trying to perpetuate the neighbouring Maze in pastry at the least expenditure in cost.