There were traces of struggle in the face which Vera Lagerloff was now studying, as she beheld it upturned toward Bettina, listening intently to Bettina’s speech.
Marguerite’s face was a pure oval, her eyes large and gray with heavily fringed dark lashes and her complexion so colorless at present that her lips seemed unusually red in comparison. The expression of her mouth was a little sad, although she seemed at the moment wholly absorbed either by Bettina Graham’s words or by her manner.
The younger girl, beside Marguerite, was thin and dark with brilliant black eyes set in a sharp almost too clever little face.
When she occasionally glanced toward Bettina, her manner was more resentful than admiring.
Yet when Bettina had finished speaking, it was Julie who asked the first question.
“Then if we start a Camp Fire group of our own, you will invite us to your house at Versailles where Marguerite Arnot is living?” she demanded so unexpectedly that Bettina, a little amused and a little surprised, could only reply:
“Why of course, I should be glad for you to come in any case, and I intended to ask Miss Lord or our Camp Fire guardian to invite you. But you must only organize a Camp Fire if the ideas which I have explained so inadequately in any way interest you.”
Bettina then turned to the older girls in the room. Nevertheless she had realized that Julie Dupont, in spite of her youth, was an undoubted force among them. Even as she had talked she had been able to observe the young girl’s sharp and not altogether pleasing personality.
The next moment Bettina added:
“I wonder if all of you can come out to our house at Versailles next Saturday afternoon, a week from today? I know you are only free on Saturday. Our Camp Fire guardian, Mrs. Burton, wishes very much to know you and will write you a more formal invitation. Miss Arnot, will you please persuade your friends to come.”