'Yes,' said Vernon, 'and cream, and plenty of both. Is it not enchanting?'
'You shall have some flowers too, dear,' cried Maud, who seldom missed an opportunity of petting Felicia and letting her love run out in some pretty act or speech. 'See, this rose was made for me to deck you with. Does she not look charming, George?'
'Hush!' said George; 'we shall make her and the little girls too as vain as possible. Now, as I suppose nobody means to crown me, I vote that you go and get ready for breakfast, and I will prepare Maud a plate of strawberries-and-cream, by way of beginning the feast.'
That morning lived ever afterwards in Maud's thoughts as one of the times when the world looked brightest to her. Everything was full of excitement, interest and keen pleasure. If from time to time a thought of Sutton set her heart beating, it was more that she had learnt to worship him as an ideal of all that was most charming in man than that his absence cost her any serious regret. It had given her a pang to part and to feel how little of a pang it had given him. He had been almost unconscious of her departure; he had been certainly quite, quite indifferent to it. Such insensibility was a little speck on the otherwise spotless perfection; but Maud's heart was too light for this to weigh it down for long. A long, charming vista of enjoyment was opening before her. Half-a-dozen people, she knew, were awaiting her arrival with impatience and thought Elysium not quite Elysium till she was there. Before the morning was over there would come, so her prophetic soul announced, kind familiar faces, all the brighter for her presence, with all sorts of delightful projects, often talked of beforehand, now to come into actual fruition; rides, picnics, dances, theatricals, and (thrilling thought!) a fancy ball, at which Maud had already found herself twenty times whirling in anticipated valses, each more enchanting than the last. Who could contemplate such a prospect with equanimity? or whose heart have room for gloomy thoughts with so many bright dreams to crush them out?
Then presently there came a note from Mrs. Vereker, bidding her a cordial welcome and threatening her high displeasure if Maud's first visit was not to her. To Mrs. Vereker's accordingly they went, and found her in a little cottage, romantically stuck into a cleft in the rocks, with a cataract of honeysuckle tumbling all about a wooden porch, and a view of the mountains which even her adorers, burning to behold herself, were yet constrained to stop and look at. There was a little court, with a wooden railing to guard the edge and geraniums blazing all about it, where a succession of enthusiasts' ponies waited while their owners did homage within. Through that convenient cranny in the foliage the deity, unseen, could spy the approaching visitor and decide betimes whether she would be 'at home' or not. Now she was unquestionably at home and met them at the door with merry greetings. She led them in and showed them her drawing-room, the very home of innocence and refined propriety. 'My husband does not wish me to mope when he is away,' she said, with a charming simple smile; and, to do her justice, in this respect, at any rate, she obeyed his wishes. If the loveliest, freshest bonnets, the daintiest gloves, the most picturesque mountain costumes, a succession of bewildering head-dresses, could rescue a widowed soul from melancholy, Mrs. Vereker had no right to gloom. Nor was hers the only nature that was cheered, for all mankind conspired to assure her that she was the most bewitching of her sex. Turn where she would she found a host of willing courtiers, who thought their assiduous services well rewarded with a single smile. She looked at the world through her beautiful purple eyes, and saw it prostrate at her feet.
Even Felicia was captivated, despite her own convictions; and Vernon alone of the party declared her a little ogling hypocrite, and pronounced himself unable to understand how any one could think her even pretty.