“Why do you look so unhappy all of a sudden, Geneviève?” she said quickly.
“I am not unhappy,” replied Geneviève hastily, the colour mounting to her cheeks.
“Well, you seem annoyed, at least. I never know how to avoid annoying you, Geneviève,” said Cicely regretfully. “Only yesterday afternoon you spoke to me very strangely and unkindly for no reason at all that I could find out. And that reminds me—Geneviève, how did you come to be talking to Mr. Guildford about my—I mean about my marriage?”
“Who said I had talked about you to him?” said Geneviève defiantly—the scarlet settling into an angry spot on each cheek.
“He himself,” replied Cicely quietly. “He said that you had told him about my marriage.”
“He knew it before,” said Geneviève evasively.
“No, he did not,” said Cicely. “I thought he did—I thought he had always known it, but he never knew it till you told him. I am not blaming you for telling it—it was no secret. I only want to know how you came to be talking about me. Mr. Guildford was quite surprised—he said you mentioned it so suddenly. How was it?”
She looked Geneviève full in the face as she asked the question. At first Geneviève’s eyes fell; she seemed frightened and half inclined to cry. But her glance happened to light on the little white card she held in her hand, and her mood changed. She raised her head, and her cheeks glowed with angry excitement. “I told him,” she said, “because I thought it would vex him. I like him not. You think everybody is in love with you, Cicely. It is not so. It is only that you are rich. Some day you may find you have been too sure—you have wanted too much. Some day perhaps you will not get what you want—then you will no longer think you are to have all because you are rich and I am poor!”
“Geneviève!” exclaimed Cicely. She could not trust herself to say more. She turned away and began examining some books that lay on a side-table, astonished, and wounded to the quick.
Another moment and Geneviève’s passion would have ended as usual in a flood of tears, but there came a diversion. Mr. Fawcett suddenly entered the room. He came in quickly, not expecting to see any one there, and as he opened the door, the first object that met his eyes was Geneviève. Geneviève in the full blaze of her beauty; her loveliness enhanced by the excitement which had reddened her cheeks and brightened her eyes, even though its source was unlovely anger; Geneviève, dressed to perfection, as he had never yet seen her, in a cloud of shimmering white, with crimson flowers in her dark hair and pearls on her pretty neck—Trevor started as he saw her, and a half smothered exclamation escaped him. And in an instant Geneviève’s face was all smiles and blushes as she hastened forward a step or two to meet him.