“I can’t help it, Myra; my tongue will talk this morning. Oh, I am so glad that it will be all right this time.”
Myra’s brow contracted a little, but her cousin rattled on.
“It has always seemed to me such stuff to talk of you as a widow. Oh, Myra, don’t look like that. What a stupid, thoughtless thing I am.”
She flung her arms about her cousin, and was again bursting into tears when there was a tap at the door, and she shrank away.
“Come in.”
One of the lady’s maids appeared.
“Sir Mark says, ma’am, that the carriages are waiting, and Miss Jerrold will not come up.”
Myra took her bouquet and turned calmly to her cousin as the maid burst out with:
“God bless you, Miss Myra—I mean madame. May you be very happy.”
The second maid was at hand to second the wish, and the pair performed a duet in sobs as the cousins swept down the broad staircase to the admiral’s room.