“No one is charitable—in London.”
“Do you think people are more indulgent in the country?”
“I suppose not. I’m afraid English people keep all their charity for the Continent. I shall never look at the girl in that group without thinking of her sad story. She looks hardly fifteen in the picture. Poor thing! She did not know what was coming.”
They loitered over their tea-table, making the most of their happiness. The sweetness of their dual life had not begun to pall. It was still new and wonderful to be together thus, unrestrained by any other presence.
In the midst of their gay talk Juanita’s eyes wandered to the bronze Time upon the chimney-piece, and the familiar figure suggested gloomy ideas.
“Oh, Godfrey! look at that grim old man with his scythe, mowing down our happy moments so fast that we can hardly taste their sweetness before they speed away. To think that our lives are hurrying past us like a rapid river, and that we shall be like him” (pointing distastefully to the type of old age—the wrinkled brow and flowing beard) “before we know that we have lived.”
“It is a pity, sweet, that life should be so short.”
Her glance wandered to the dark oak panel above the clock, and she started up from her low chair with a faint scream, stood on tiptoe before the fireplace, snatched half a dozen scraggy peacock’s feathers from the panel, and threw them at her husband’s feet.
“Look at those,” she exclaimed, pointing to them as they lay there.
“Peacock’s feathers! What have they done that you should use them so?”