“I am not going!” sighed the humming-bird, dolorously. “I have had a horrid sore throat all day—and—a—headache—and Aunt Mary got frightened, and forbade me to put my head out of doors.”
“That is a heart-rending affliction! And could you not send the incomparable dress as your representative?”
“Don't laugh!” she said, jerking away her head. “I cannot bear it to-night—not that I care the millionth part of a fig for all the parties in christendom; and as for the dress, you think that I haven't a soul above such frippery and gewgaws: but I wish I had never seen it. I shall never wear it as long as I live!”
And out came the laced cambric to absorb the gathering dew.
“There is something in this I do not understand,” said Frederic, setting a chair for himself close to hers. “Are you really suffering? I imagined that yours was a case of simple cold, and that Mrs. Mason advised you to remain indoors chiefly on account of the weather. It is raining hard!”
“I am glad it is!” she replied, with the manner of one bereft of human sympathy, and extracting gloomy delight from the unison of nature with her morbid broodings. “And my throat isn't nearly so painful as I made Aunt Mary believe. I did not want to go out. Parties are an awful bore when one is sad-hearted.”
“You really must forgive me!” said Frederic, as she twitched her face away again at the laugh he could not suppress. “But sadness and you should not be thought of in the same week. Honestly, now! is not the inimitable fabric you sported for five minutes last night, at the bottom of what appears to you a fathomless abyss of woe? Have you tried the efficacy of rational consolation in the thought of how many more parties there will be this winter to which you can wear it? The Secretary of State is to give one in ten days, which is to be the sensation of the season. That of to-night is, in comparison, as a caucus to a general convention.”
“I shall never put on the hateful thing again. If Julia Cunningham chooses to bedizen herself in it, she is welcome to it—flounces and all. Yet I did like it! I had hoped—but no matter what! You had better be going, Mr. Chilton. Aunt and the rest of them went three-quarters of an hour ago.”
“Does a dress go out of fashion in so short a time?” persisted innocent Frederic, bent upon mitigating her sorrow. “If my memory serves me aright, I have seen ladies wear the same ball-dress several times in the same winter.”
“You will never see this on me,” snapped Rosa, her eyes ominously fiery again. “Did you hear me advise you of the lateness of the hour?”