'Is that Mr. Charteris?' said Hazel.
'It is every man!'
'Some flourish their sceptres with a difference,' said Hazel, her lips at play. 'Take another bonbon?'
'It's nothing to laugh at!' said the girl bitterly. 'I know you will tell me you warned me,but what could I do? They were all at me; mamma said I must be married some time; and I thought it didn't make much difference; and nowI think I'll run away. Do you like your husband?'
'No,' said Hazel with indescribable arch of her brows, which was however extremely stately. But as she spoke, the very flush of the morningall light and joy and promisestirred and mantled and covered her face. It was unmistakeable; words could not have been clearer. She bent down over her parcels. And Josephine, watching her keenly, saw and read. It was very bitter to her.
'Why,' she said incredulously, though she was not incredulous, 'you used to hate him a year ago. Do you remember when he would not let you ride home with us from the Seatons' one night, and how furious you were? Has he changed?'
'As I never remember hating anybody in my life,' said Wych hazel, 'it is perhaps useless to discuss the question. Do you spend the winter here?'
'He had money enough of his own,' Josephine went on,'he had no business to marry you. Wellmarriage is a lottery, they say; and I have drawn John Charteris. I suppose I must wear him out. If I could wear him out!If it was only Jack Charteris!but he is the sort of man you couldn't say "Jack" to. Spend the winter here? No, I think not. I shall go to Washington by and by. But I don't see that it signifies much where one is; life is flat when one can't flirt; and John won't let me do that any more, unless I do it on the sly. Do you expect to have anything in the world your own way, with Dane Rollo?'
Hazel felt herself (privately) getting rather "furious" now. Yet the girl at her side stirred her pity, too.
'What sort of man can you say "Jack" to?' she enquired, as if she had heard no question.