What more she might have added was stopped by the entrance of Caroline, whose jealous surveillance had discovered the tête-à-tête. Casting a fiery glance of suspicion on both, which was received with admirable coolness, she turned to Hargrave, and rather peremptorily informed him, that the case of fruit and flowers which he had ordered from his gardens, at Aston, was arrived, and they waited his permission to open it.
"Oh, I will come," said he, looking rather amused, than either sorry or angry at her displeasure. "Miss Lesly, you will like to see some flowers from Aston."
Accepting the half implied invitation to accompany them, Mabel followed to the morning room, where an immense basket was surrounded by Mrs. Villars and her daughters, in anxious expectation, while china and glass dishes were waiting to receive the fruit.
The basket fully answered the demand upon it—and satisfied Hargrave as to the state of his green-houses and hot-house, by producing some excellent specimens of forced early fruit, which Mrs. Villars had been anticipating, not only as an additional charm to her supper-table, but as a public proof of his anxiety to please her.
Besides flowers for vases, Hargrave drew from the basket, bouquets, arranged with a gardener's nicety, which he presented to Mrs. Villars and her daughters. They were composed of the most beautiful hot-house flowers, and were all in exquisite taste—but by some chance, it happened that the one presented to Caroline, far excelled the others in beauty. The sisters exchanged glances, and Caroline's haughty eye beamed with triumph.
"Stay, what is this?" said the unconscious Hargrave, dipping his hand again into the basket, and drawing forth from the moss, with which it was carefully packed, a bouquet, much smaller in size, and singularly pretty, because composed entirely of white flowers of the rarest kind. "Is it not beautiful?" he exclaimed, holding it up to view; "it really does my gardener credit."
"Beautiful indeed!" exclaimed every one.
"What is that paper round it?" said Maria.
Hargrave turned to the small strip of rather untidy paper, which was fastened to it, and read—
"Miss Lesly will accept this, with my respects."