Miss Marchmont blushed as she received this information, and her brown eyes wandered away, looking very earnestly at the pretty girls in blue. She looked at them with a strange interest, eager to discover what it was that Edward admired.
"But you haven't answered my question, Polly," said Mr. Arundel. "I am afraid you have been drinking too much wine, Miss Marchmont, and muddling that sober little head of yours with the fumes of your papa's tawny port. I asked you how you liked Olivia."
Mary blushed again.
"I don't know Miss Arundel well enough to like her—yet," she answered timidly.
"But shall you like her when you've known her longer? Don't be jesuitical, Polly. Likings and dislikings are instantaneous and instinctive. I liked you before I'd eaten half a dozen mouthfuls of the roll you buttered for me at that breakfast in Oakley Street, Polly. You don't like my cousin Olivia, miss; I can see that very plainly. You're jealous of her."
"Jealous of her!"
The bright colour faded out of Mary Marchmont's face, and left her ashy pale.
"Do you like her, then?" she asked.
But Mr. Arundel was not such a coxcomb as to catch at the secret so naïvely betrayed in that breathless question.
"No, Polly," he said, laughing; "she's my cousin, you know, and I've known her all my life; and cousins are like sisters. One likes to tease and aggravate them, and all that; but one doesn't fall in love with them. But I think I could mention somebody who thinks a great deal of Olivia."