For an instant she felt something like fright. "Of course not! He's just a bully fellow, and I like him. Nothing more; I don't—" She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and the image held her eye. The vivid, smiling face, a little thin, with the color hot, just now, on the high cheek-bones; dark, wavy hair, falling back from a charming brow which, pathetically enough (for she was only twenty-five), had lines in it. "Heavens!" she said, "I believe I do!" She laughed, and, jumping to her feet, shook the mane of hair over her eyes. But before she began to brush it she lifted the hand Howard Maitland had gripped, and kissed it hard, once—twice!
"I do—care," she said; "I didn't know it was like this!" She glowed all over. "I am in love," she repeated, amazed.
While she tumbled the soft, dark hair into a loose knot on the top of her head she tried to whistle, but her lips were unsteady. She did not know herself with this quiver all through her, and the sudden stinging in her eyes, and something swelling and tightening in her throat. She forgot the shocked old maids, and the disgusted trustee. She was in love! She began to sing, but broke off at a faint knock.
"Dinner's ready, Miss Freddy."
"Come in, Flora," Frederica called out; "and hook me up." She smiled so gaily at the silent creature, not even scolding when the slim, cold finger-tips touched her warm shoulder, that the woman smiled a little, too. "I thought this was your afternoon out?" Fred said, kindly.
"I 'ain't got no place in partic'lar to go. Anyway, I knew your ma wasn't goin' to be in, and—"
"I bet you played on the piano," Frederica said, smiling at herself in the glass.
"Well, yes'm, I did," the woman confessed. "I picked out the whole of 'Rock of Ages.'"
"Flora! Don't look so low-spirited; I believe you're in love. Have you got a new beau? I've been told that people are always low-spirited when they're in love."
Flora simpered; "Ah, now, Miss Freddy!"