And then one lovely winter afternoon, when they were just discussing how perhaps they might take the invalid out for a ride in the car some day next week, the fly dropped into the ointment!
It was as lovely a fly as ever walked on tiny French heels, and came in a limousine lined with gray duvetyn and electrically heated and graced with hothouse rosebuds in a slender glass behind the chauffeur’s right ear. She picked her way daintily up the snowy walk, surveyed the house and grounds critically as far as the Amber hedge, and rang the bell peremptorily.
Miss Marilla herself went to the front door, for Molly Poke was busy making cream-puffs and couldn’t stop; and, when she saw the little fly standing haughtily on the porch, swathed in a gorgeous moleskin cloak with a voluminous collar of tailless ermine, and a little toque made of coral velvet embroidered in silver, she thought right away of a spider. A very beautiful spider, it is true, but all the same a spider.
And, when the beautiful red lips opened and spoke, she thought so all the more.
“I have come to see Lyman Gage,” she announced freezingly, looking at Miss Marilla with the glance one gives to a servant. Miss Marilla cast a frightened glance of discernment over the beautiful little face. For it was beautiful, there was no mistaking that, very perfectly beautiful, though it might have been only superficially so. Miss Marilla was not used to seeing a skin that looked like soft rose-leaves in baby perfection on a person of that age. Great baby eyes of blue, set wide, with curling dark lashes, eyebrows that seemed drawn by a fairy brush, lips of such ruby-red pout, and nose chiselled in warm marble. Peaches and cream floated through her startled mind, and it never occurred to her it was not natural. Oh, the vision was beautiful; there was no doubt about that.
Miss Marilla closed the door, and stood with her back to the stairs and a look of defence upon her face. She had a fleeting thought of Mary and whether she ought to be protected. She had a spasm of fierce jealousy, and a frenzy as to what she should do.
“You can step into the parlor,” she said in a tone that she hoped was calm, although she knew it was not cordial. “I’ll go up and see if he’s able to see you. He’s been very sick. The doctor hasn’t let him see any”—she paused, and eyed the girl defiantly—“any strangers.”
“Oh, that’ll be all right,” laughed the girl with a disagreeable tinkle. “I’m not a stranger. I’m only his fiancée.” But she pronounced “fiancée” in a way that Miss Marilla didn’t recognize at all, and she looked at her hard. It wasn’t “wife,” anyway; and it hadn’t sounded like “sister” or “cousin.” Miss Marilla looked at the snip—that was what she began to call her in her mind—and decided that she didn’t want her to see Lyman Gage at all; but of course Lyman Gage must be the one to decide that.
“What did you say your name was?” she asked bluntly.
For answer the girl brought out a ridiculous little silk bag with a clattering clasp and chain, and took therefrom a tiny gold card-case, from which she handed Miss Marilla a card. Miss Marilla adjusted her spectacles, and studied it a moment with one foot on the lower stairs.