Mary Carr turned the square. It was a French marigold.
"'French marigold: unhappy love; its end possible death,'" read Janet Duff from the explanations. "It is about the worst in the pack."
Some of the girls shivered--that dortoir was always cold. Adeline laughed merrily. "It is only nonsense," she said: and she spoke as she thought.
And the singular part was, that Adeline de Castella had tried those cards since, a dozen times at least; and this ill-omened French marigold had always clung to her whenever it was of those placed on her hand. The hyacinth had been dreaded so much from the first, that Janet Duff took it out of the pack. And the French marigold, so far as was seen, never rested on any other hand than Adeline de Castella's.
"It is certainly singular," mused Adeline, when she tried her fate at the cards for the last time before leaving school, and the French marigold clung to her as usual.
New Year's Day came in: and with its evening a clash of many carriages, impatient horses, and quarrelsome coachmen filled the streets, for the gay world of Belport was flocking to the house of Signor de Castella.
It was a brilliant scene, those reception-rooms, brilliant with their blaze of light and their exotics. Adeline de Castella stood by her mother. The guests had known and thought of her but as a plainly attired, simple schoolgirl, and were not prepared to recognize her as she stood before them in her costly attire and wondrous beauty. Her robes of white lace, flowing and elegant, sparkled with emeralds; single chains of emeralds encircled her neck, her arms, and confined in their place the waves of her silken hair; lustrous emeralds, heirlooms of the ancient family of de Castella. Her features, pure and regular as if chiselled from marble, were glowing with the crimson flush of excitement, rendering more conspicuous her excessive loveliness.
"Oh, Adeline," whispered Mary Carr, when she could steal a few words with her, "how beautiful you are!"
"What! have you turned flatterer too!"
"Flattery---to you! How mistaken they were tonight, when they supposed Rose would outshine all! If they could only see you now!"