"By-the-bye, she is coming to see you soon, is she not?" said Mr. Furnivale. "She is, as of course you know, an old friend of ours, and she writes often to ask how Cecy is. And in her last letter she said she hoped to come to see you soon."
"I have not heard anything decided about it," replied Mrs. Vincent. "I had begun to think she would not come this year—she was speaking of going to some seaside place."
"Ah, but I rather think she has changed her mind, then," said Mr. Furnivale, and then he went on to talk of something else to him of more importance. But poor Mrs. Vincent was really troubled.
"I should not mind Edith herself coming," she said to herself. "She is really good and kind, and I think I could make her understand how cruel it is to spoil Rosy. But it is the maid—that Nelson—I cannot like or trust her, and I believe she did Rosy more harm than all her aunt's over-indulgence. And Edith is so fond of her; I cannot say anything against her," for Miss Vincent was an invalid, and very dependent on this maid.
Little Beata noticed that during luncheon Rosy's mother looked troubled, and it made her feel sorry. Rosy perhaps would have noticed it too, had she not been so very much taken up with her own fancied troubles. She was running full-speed into one of her cross jealous moods, and everything that was said or done, she took the wrong way. Her father helped Bee before her—that, she could not but allow was right, as Bee was a guest—but now it seemed to her that he chose the nicest bits for Bee, with a care he never showed in helping her. Rosy was not the least greedy—she would have been ready and pleased to give away anything, so long as she got the credit of it, and was praised and thanked, but to be treated second-best in the way in which she chose to imagine she was being treated—that, she could not and would not stand. She sat through luncheon with a black look on her pretty face; so that Mr. Furnivale, whom she was beside, found her much less pleasant to talk to than Bee opposite, though Bee herself was less bright and merry than usual.
Mrs. Vincent felt glad that no more was said about Aunt Edith's coming. She felt that she did not wish Rosy to hear of it, and yet she did not like to ask Mr. Furnivale not to mention it, as it seemed ungrateful to think or speak of a visit from Miss Vincent except with pleasure. After luncheon, when they were again in the drawing-room, Mr. Furnivale came up to her with a small parcel in his hand.
"I am so sorry," he began, with a little hesitation, "I am so sorry that I did not know Beata Warwick was with you. Cecy had no idea of it, and she begged me to give your little girl this present we bought for her in Venice, and now I don't half like giving it to the one little woman when I have nothing for the other."
He opened the parcel as he spoke; it contained a quaint-looking little box, which in its turn, when opened, showed a necklace of glass beads of every imaginable colour. They were not very large—each bead perhaps about the size of a pea—of a large pea, that is to say. And some of them were long, not thicker, but twice as long as the others. I can scarcely tell you how pretty they were. Every one was different, and they were beautifully arranged so that the colours came together in the prettiest possible way. One was pale blue with little tiny flowers, pink or rose-coloured raised upon it; one was white with a sort of rainbow glistening of every colour through it; two or three were black, but with a different tracery, gold or red or bright green, on each; and some were a kind of mixture of colours and patterns which seemed to change as you looked at them, so that you could fancy you saw flowers, or figures, or tiny landscapes even, which again disappeared—and no two the same.
"Oh how lovely," exclaimed Rosy's mother, "how very, very pretty."
"Yes," said Mr. Furnivale, "they are pretty. And they are now rare. These are really old, and the imitation ones, which they make in plenty, are not half so curious. Cecy thought they would take a child's fancy."