"You are out of your senses!" exclaimed Mary Carr, all too eagerly. "Don't impose your fabulous tales on us."
"Shall I tell it?" repeated Rose, maintaining her ground and her equanimity.
"Tell it," said Mr. St. John, carelessly. Did he think she knew so much!
"Tell it," repeated Adeline, but it was the motion of the syllables, rather than the words, that came from between her white and parted lips.
"Sarah Beauclerc."
A transient surprise crossed Mr. St. John's countenance, and was gone again. Adeline saw it: and from that wild, bitter moment, a pang of anguish took root within her, which was never to be erased during life.
"You are under a slight misapprehension, Rose," said Mr. St. John, with indifference.
"Am I? The world was under another, perhaps, when it asserted that the honour of Mr. St. John's hand would fall to Sarah Beauclerc."
"That it certainly was--if it ever did assert it. And I might believe it possible, were the world peopled with Rose Darlings."
"Look here," exclaimed Rose, snatching his pocket-handkerchief from a gilt cage, where he had thrown it to protect the beautiful bird from the rays of the setting sun. "Look at this, 'Frederick St. John,' worked in hair!"