CHAPTER XL.
UNDER THE ORANGE-BLOSSOMS.
One beautiful day in August, about a month after the events just narrated, Miss Charlotte came over to see Clara. She was looking quite radiant with some new happiness, and Clara noticed that the plain Quakerish knot in which she was wont to confine her really pretty dark hair had undergone considerable change in its structure. It was less rigidly twisted, and from the mass depended several natural curls. She wore a pretty silver-gray barêge, flounced to the waist, and with the upper skirt open, short, and looped up at the sides with ribbon.
Seating herself in an arm-chair, she said, “Now stand right there, Clara—no, just behind a little, and fan me while I tell you something.” Clara obeyed.
“Dear me! How shall I ever commence? I begin to repent.”
“Take your own time, Miss Delano. I will wait as long as you wish.”
“No; I won’t wait. If I do, I shall never tell you—The old maid is going to make a fool of herself. There!”
“Oh, that is splendid! You are going to marry Paul’s cousin Felix. This is most agreeable news. From all I hear of him, he is an admirable gentleman.”
“Yes; but I wish he’d cut off that terrific Blue-Beard moustache. Do you like moustaches? I can’t endure them. They are too signal a confirmation of Darwin’s Origin of Species, according to which I believe we lose our hair as we advance to higher types. Is that so?”
“Papa says,” replied Clara, laughing, “that the coming man’s head is going to be as smooth as an ostrich egg; but I think, myself, the moustache will change. I think it is ugly just in proportion as it hides the contour of the lips.”
“I see you are thinking of Paul’s blonde, silky affair. Well, that is very different. It stays where he puts it. At table a little twist of his fingers, and his mouth is free; but Felix—well, I’m sure I must be in love with him, or I should never have consented to marry him after seeing him eat soup every day for a year.”