“Naughty child!” said Mrs. Purcell.  “See now what you’ve done!”

“What have I to do with it?”

“Then you haven’t any bad news for me?  Has any one heard from the Colonel?  Is he ill?”

“Pshaw!” said Marguerite, rising and throwing down her napkin.

She went to the window and looked out.

“It is time you were gone, little lady,” said Mr. Raleigh.

She approached Mrs. Purcell and passed her hand down her hair.

“What pretty soft hair you have!” said she.  “These braids are like carved gold-stone.  May I dress it with sweet-brier to-night?  I brought home a spray.”

“Rite!” said Mrs. Laudersdale sweetly, at the door; and Rite obeyed the summons.

In a half-hour she came slowly down the stairs, untwisting a long string of her mother’s abandoned pearls, great pear-shaped things full of the pale lustre of gibbous moons.  She wore a dress of white samarcand, with a lavish ornament like threads and purfiles of gold upon the bodice, and Ursule followed with a cloak.  As she entered the drawing-room, the great bunches of white azalea, which her mother had brought from the swamps, caught her eye; she threw down the pearls, and broke off rapid dusters of the queenly flowers, touching the backward-curling hyacinthine petals, and caressingly passing her finger down the pale purple shadow of the snowy folds.  Directly afterward she hung them in her breezy hair, from which, by natural tenure, they were not likely to fall, bound them over her shoulders and in her waist.

“See!  I stand like Summer,” she said, “wrapped in perfume; it is intoxicating.”

Just then two hands touched her, and her father bent his face over her.  She flung her arms round him, careless of their fragile array, kissed him on both cheeks, laughed, and kissed him again.  She did not speak, for he disliked French, and English sometimes failed her.

“Here is Mr. Heath,” her father said.

She partly turned, touched that gentleman’s hand with the ends of her fingers, and nodded.  Her father whispered a brief sentence in her ear.

“Jamais, Monsieur, jamais!” she exclaimed; then, with a quick gesture of deprecation, moved again toward him; but Mr. Laudersdale had coldly passed to make his compliments to Mrs. Heath.

“You are not in toilet?” said Marguerite, following him, but speaking with Mr. Raleigh.

“No,—­Mrs. Purcell has been playing for me a little thing I always liked,—­that sweet, tuneful afternoon chiding of the Miller and the Torrent.”

She glanced at Mrs. Purcell, saw that her dress remained unaltered, and commenced pulling out the azaleas from her own.

“I do not want to go,” she murmured.  “I need not!  Mamma and Mrs. McLean have already gone in the other carriage.”

“Come, Marguerite,” said Mr. Laudersdale, approaching her, as Mr. Heath and his mother disappeared.