Yet everywhere was lovely confusion—delicate things were thrown half-way into open trunks, filmy fabrics floated from unexpected places, small slippers were held by receptacles never designed for shoes, radiant hats bloomed in boxes.
On a chair lay a bridesmaid's bunch of roses. This bunch Mary Ballard picked up as she passed, and it was over the top of it that she asked, with some diffidence, "Do you think you'd care to take the rooms?"
Did he? Did the Peri outside the gates yearn to enter? Here within his reach was that from which he had been cut off for five years. Five years in boarding-houses and cheap hotels, and now the chance to live again—as he had once lived!
"I do want them—awfully—but the price named in your letter seems ridiculously small——"
"But you see it is all I shall need," she was as blissfully unbusinesslike as he. "I want to add a certain amount to my income, so I ask you to pay that," she smiled, and with increasing diffidence demanded, "Could you make up your mind—now? It is important that I should know—to-night."
She saw the question in his eyes and answered it, "You see—my family have no idea that I am doing this. If they knew, they wouldn't want me to rent the rooms—but the house is mine—-I shall do as I please."
She seemed to fling it at him, defiantly.
"And you want me to be accessory to your—crime."
She gave him a startled glance. "Oh, do you look at it—that way? Please don't. Not if you like them."
For a moment, only, he wavered. There was something distinctly unusual in acquiring a vine and fig tree in this fashion. But then her advertisement had been unusual—it was that which had attracted him, and had piqued his interest so that he had answered it.