Presently she paused, opening her eyes wider and holding aloft her brush. "There will be a bride's-maid," she said.
"The deuce!" he thought. "That didn't end it!" But he said no thing aloud.
"Guess who!"
"Why, how should I——?"
"Guess!" she cried peremptorily, in a tone of bitter derision. "You won't? Well, it's Carolyn—our poor, silly Carolyn! And what do you suppose she has started in to do? She is writing an epitha—an epithal——"
"——amium," contributed Cope. "An epithala-mium."
"Yes, an epithala-mium!" repeated Hortense, with an outburst of jarring laughter. "Isn't she absurd! Isn't she ridiculous!"
"Is she? Why, it seems to me a delicate attention, a very sweet thought." If Carolyn could make anything out of Amy—and of George—why, let her do it.
"You like her poetry!" cried Hortense in a high, strained voice. "You enjoy her epithalamiums, and her—sonnets…."
Cope flushed and began to grow impatient. "She is a sweet girl," he said; "and if she wishes to write verse she is quite within her rights."