Her heart gave a wild leap in her breast and tears sprang to her eyes. She dashed them away, exclaiming to herself:
“I am a little silly, as Ada said! It is nothing to me whom he calls on or whom he marries. I have no claim on him!”
She threw the book aside. Then she rang for her maid to bring her some fruit and chocolate bonbons, her favorite sweets. She thought, perhaps, that aching pain came from hunger.
She remembered that she had scarcely touched anything at dinner. And now the fruit and the sweets tasted bitter, she said petulantly to her maid.
The unsuspecting Maria replied that if her lady’s tongue had a bitter taste she must be bilious and needed some calomel. She was sure the fruit and the candy were all right.
“Take them all away. I will go down to the conservatory for some flowers,” was the impatient reply.
She glanced in the long mirror as she passed and saw that she was looking her loveliest in the turquoise blue silk dinner gown with fluffy lace all about it and pearls on her neck and in her hair—the golden hair that was like an aureole about her lovely head.
Rupert thought that golden hair was the prettiest in the world; he often told Eva so. She was glad that Ada’s was not golden—just a lovely chestnut brown.
She went slowly, nervously, down to the drawing-room, and as she passed near the curtains that divided it from the reception room the sound of low voices mixed with laughter came to her ears.
Their gayety went like a sword through Eva’s heart. It seemed to her as if he must indeed be in love with Ada.