The contract had been loyally observed. Ethel never had any secrets. Rita had had several during the year of their association, but they had proved only minor little secrets after all. Sooner or later she had told them, and they had been food for virginal laughter for them both.
But now, during the last few weeks?—Ethel's glance flitted uneasily from the big photograph upon the piano to a little round table of bamboo work in one corner of the sitting room.
Upon this table lay a huge bunch of dark red roses. The stalks were fitted into a holder of finely-woven white grass—as delicate in texture as a panama hat—and the bouquet was tied with graceful bows and streamers of purple satin—broad, expensive ribbon.
A boy messenger, most unusual visitor, had brought them an hour ago. "For Miss Rita Wallace."
The quiet mind, the crystal soul of this girl, dimly discerned something alien and disturbing.
The door of the sitting-room opened and Rita came in.
She was radiant. Her one evening dress was not an expensive affair, a simple, girl's frock of olive-green crêpe de chene in the Empire fashion, but the girl and her clothes were one.
The high "waist," coming just under the curve of the breast, was edged with an embroidery of dull silver thread, and the gleam of this upon its olive setting threw up the fair column of the throat the rounded arms, the whiteness of the girlish bosom, with a most striking and arresting lustre.
Round her neck the girl wore a riband of dark green velvet, and as a pendant from it hung a little star of amethysts and olivines set in a filigree of platinum, no rare nor costly jewel, but a beautiful one. She was pulling her long white gloves up to the elbow as she entered the room.
Ethel loved Rita dearly. Rita was her romance, the art and colour of her life. She was always saying or doing astonishing things, she was always beautiful. To-night, though the frock was an old friend, the pendant quite familiar, Ethel thought that she had never seen her friend so lovely. The nut-brown hair was shining, the young, brown eyes lit up with excitement and joy, the tints of rose and pearl upon Rita's cheeks came and went as her heart beat.