“You don’t mean to say that if Charles Huyton were to propose to you, you would accept him?” said Isabel, turning full on her sister.
“Would not you, Isabel?” was Dora’s reply.
“Our tastes are not usually so similar that that should be any answer,” said Isabel.
“Well,” said Dora, starting up, “I mean what I say; I was not flirting with Mr. Huyton more than he was with me.”
“And if he were to ask you to marry him, you know you would say no, as you did to Lord Dunsmore!”
“No, I would accept him on the spot,” cried Dora, giving way to a desperate fit of pique and mortified feeling. “You need not look so scornful, Isabel; I mean what I say.”
“Luckily you are not likely to be put to the test,” replied Miss Barham. “But we must go and dress, or the countess will be here before we are ready to go with her.”
Dora, however, did not follow her sister’s example; but when the other quitted the room, she remained reclining on the sofa. Her head ached, her heart ached still more; affection wounded, vanity and pride alike outraged; sorrow, real sorrow, a sense of injustice in herself, and of having been all through in the wrong, made her bosom throb, and flushed her cheek, and really rendered her quite unfit for society.
She was still sitting languidly thinking, when her father and his guest entered the room.
“What is the matter with you, Dora?” said the former, in a voice of unusual kindness; “what makes you look so pensive?”