“What happened?”
“I don’t know what happened; nothing, I think. There was a kind of icy breath all over the room, and I thought my heart would stop. But Lady Anne’s voice was as cool as—oh! cool as snow, if snow could speak. Afterwards I got burning hot; the ice went and the fire came, and—and I have done it!”
Lilian looked perplexed. She turned round and gazed at me; then she burst into a peal of merriest laughter.
“Oh, you funny girl!” she said. “Just to think of you—the horror, as mother called you—calmly breaking dear Lady Anne’s sacred Salviati, and Oh, you don’t half know the heinousness of your crime!”
“You are rubbing it in pretty hard,” I said.
She laughed again immoderately; she could not stop laughing.
“Oh! I could kiss you,” she said; “I could hug you. I hate that room and those tables and curios; it is wicked—it is wrong for any one to make her room exactly like a curiosity shop, and that is what Lady Anne does. But then it’s her hobby. Well, you have knocked over one of her idols, and she’ll never forgive you.”
“If she never expects me to come to see her again I shall certainly survive,” I said. “But please don’t laugh at me any more.”
“Oh, I admire you so much,” said Lilian; “you have such courage!”
“But you don’t think I did it on purpose, do you?”