"Yes, and they harmonize well with your dress."
But in his heart he longed to tear them from her breast and trample them beneath his feet. They had taught him a bitter lesson—one he would not soon forget.
Dinner was announced, and he took Ida into the dining-room. Bryant gave Sylvie his arm, and Una followed with her sisters-in-law, hiding with a smile her pain at the preference Eliot had shown Miss Hayes.
"How he must hate me, for he can not help thinking that but for me he would not have lost her. It was right to give her the flowers. She had really the best right to them," she said miserably to herself.
The flowers, the lights, the china and silver of the well-appointed table flashed confusedly before her eyes. She could see nothing clearly but the pretty wax-doll face of Miss Hayes as she sat opposite to Eliot and talked to him incessantly.
Glancing up and down the long table at the fair faces of the five ladies, she said, gayly:
"Two gentlemen and five ladies! Only two have cavaliers. There are three of us too many."
Una thought, with keen shame and inexpressible bitterness:
"Only one too many, and that one is poor little me!"