"I wish I could help her," she was saying to herself, as she returned to her apartment. The aroma that stole upon her senses said, "you can." She was no heroine, for she stood over her flowers, and doubted and pondered for a good half hour, before her wavering mind rested upon its pivot; and then a tear bedewed a Camelia's spotless bosom, as she emptied the vase, and saying aloud, "If thine enemy thirst, give him drink," set about arranging them anew. Her Christmas rose-tree was hanging with buds, which, on the morrow, would be blossoms, but she despoiled it of its nodding pearls; and adding geraniums and citronaloes, completed as tasteful a bouquet, as ever bloomed under the fingers of a fashionable florist.
She gave it to Josephine, when she came into the parlor to survey her full-length figure in the tall glass.
"Oh! how lovely!" she exclaimed involuntarily; then recovering herself, said coldly, "They are pretty;" and returned them.
"They are for you," said Ida.
"Who sent them?"
"They were presented to me; and as their beauty is wasted upon the 'desert air' of my chamber, I shall be obliged to you to display them."
Josephine would have rejected the generous offer, if there had been the remotest chance of another; but it was late, and she could not go bouquetless.
"Who gave them to you?" she asked.
Ida paused, then replied, "Mr. Dana."
"He will know them; I had rather go without any."