The gum arrives. She holds the flowers, while he with a paint-brush delicately insinuates one drop into the scarlet heart of each. Their heads are bent so close together that his crisp brown locks brush against the silk-smooth sweep of hers.
"Gently, gently!" cries Esther, pleasantly excited by the consciousness of doing something rather hors de règle in that prim household, in having this impromptu tête-à-tête with its heir—"not so much! the least soupçon imaginable—there! does not it look like a sticky dewdrop?"
"These people that are coming ought to be very much flattered by the efforts you are making in their honour," says Gerard, half jealously.
"Are they worth making efforts for?"
"You must tell me that to-morrow."
"Who will take me in to dinner, do you think?" she asks, confidentially, looking up at him with childish inquisitiveness.
"I have not an idea; but make your mind easy; it won't be Sir Thomas or me."
"Hardly; but I am sorry that you do not know who it will be, as you might have told me what to talk about."
"Do you always get up your subject beforehand, like Belinda Denzil, out of the Saturday or Echoes of the Clubs?"
"Oh no! but—"