"What has she come for?" Frona asked herself, as she talked on furs and weather and indifferent things.
"If you do not say something, Lucile, I shall get nervous, soon," she ventured at last in desperation. "Has anything happened?"
Lucile went over to the mirror and picked up, from among the trinkets beneath, a tiny open-work miniature of Frona. "This is you? How old were you?"
"Sixteen."
"A sylph, but a cold northern one."
"The blood warms late with us," Frona reproved; "but is—"
"None the less warm for that," Lucile laughed. "And how old are you now?"
"Twenty."
"Twenty," Lucile repeated, slowly. "Twenty," and resumed her seat.
"You are twenty. And I am twenty-four."
"So little difference as that!"