For the owner of the eyes and lips, she put the camellias, carefully in water, and far away in the small hours went to bed and to sleep. And sleeping she dreamed, that all dressed in scarlet, and wearing a crown of scarlet camellias, she was standing up to be married to Sir Victor Catheron with Mr. Charley Stuart as officiating clergyman, when the door opened, and the murdered lady of Trixy's story came stalking in, and whirled her screaming away in her ghostly arms.
Too much excitement, champagne, and lobster salad had engendered the vision no doubt, but it certainly spoiled Miss Darrell's beauty sleep that night.
CHAPTER VI.
ONE MOONLIGHT NIGHT.
The pleasant days went on—April went out—May came in. On the tenth of May, the Stuart family, Sir Victor Catheron, and Lady Helena Powyss were to sail from New York for Liverpool.
To Edith, fresh from the twilight of her country life, these days and nights had been one bewildering round of excitement and delight. Opera, theatre, dinner and evening parties, shopping, driving, calling, receiving—all that goes to make the round of that sort of life, had been run. Her slender wardrobe had been replenished, the white Swiss had been reinforced by half-a-dozen glistening silks; the corals, by a set of rubies and fine gold. Mr. Stuart might be pompous and pretentious, but he wasn't stingy, and he had insisted upon it for his own credit. And half-a-dozen "spandy new" silks, fresh from Stewart's counters, with the pristine glitter of their bloom yet upon them, were very different from one half-worn amber tissue of Trixy's. Miss Darrell took the dresses and the rubies, and looked uncommonly handsome in both.
On the last night but one, of their stay in New York, Mrs. Featherbrain gave a last "At Home," a sort of "P. P. C." party, Trixy called it. Miss Darrell was invited, and said nothing at the time, unless tossing the card of invitation contemptuously out of the window can be called saying something; but at the last moment she declined to go.
"My head is whirling now, from a surfeit of parties," she said to Miss Stuart. "Aunt Chatty is going to stay at home, and so shall I. I don't like your Mrs. Featherbrain—that's the truth—and I'm not fashionable enough yet to sham friendship with women I hate. Besides, Trix dear, you know you were a little—just a little—jealous of me, the other night at Roosevelt's. Sir Victor danced with me once oftener than he did with you. Now, you dear old love, I'll let you have a whole baronet to yourself, for this night, and who knows what may happen before morning?"
Miss Edith Darrell was one of those young persons—happily rare—who, when they take a strong antipathy, are true to it, even at the sacrifice of their own pleasure. In her secret soul, she was jealous of Mrs. Featherbrain. If she and Charley carried on their imbecile flirtation, at least it would not be under her disgusted eyes.
Miss Stuart departed—not the lilies of the field—not Solomon in all his glory—not the Queen of Sheba herself, ever half so magnificent. Charley went with her, a placid martyr to brotherly duty. And Edith went down to the family sitting-room where Aunt Chatty (Aunt Chatty by request) sat dozing in her after-dinner chair.