Happily unaware that her face had betrayed her, Gabriella slid back a glass door, took a hat out of the case, and answered indifferently, while she adjusted the ribbon bow on one side of the crown: 

“I didn’t know Mr. Fowler had come back.  I haven’t seen him for ages.”

From her small, smooth head to her slender feet she had acquired in three months the composed efficiency of Miss Lancaster; and one might have imagined, as Mrs. Spencer remarked to Florrie afterwards, that “she had been born in a hat shop.”

But instead of the weary patience of Miss Lancaster, she brought to her work the brimming energy and the joyous self-confidence of youth.  It was impossible to watch her and not realize that she had given both ability and the finer gift of personality to the selling of hats.  Had she started life as a funeral director instead of a milliner, it is probable that she would have infused into the dreary business something of the living quality of genius.

“Oh, Florrie hadn’t seen him for ages either,” chirped Mrs. Spencer, with her restless eyes on the hat in Gabriella’s hand.  “I don’t know whether I ought to tell you or not, but you and Florrie are so intimate I suppose I might as well—­Julia Caperton told Florrie that George came back because he heard in some way that you had broken your engagement to Arthur.  Of course, as I told Julia afterwards, you hadn’t mentioned a word of it to me, but I’ve got eyes and I can’t help using them.  I was obliged to see that George was simply out of his mind about you.  It would be a splendid match, too, for they say his father has made quite a large fortune since he went to New York—­”

“Mother!” interrupted Florrie sternly, over her shoulder, “you know Julia told you not to breathe a single word as coming from her.  She is the bosom friend of George’s sister.”

“But, Florrie, I haven’t told a soul except Gabriella, and I know she wouldn’t repeat a thing that I said to her.”

“Now, isn’t that exactly like mother?” observed Florrie, with the casual disapprobation of youth.  “She was on the point of telling Miss Lancaster all about it when I stopped her.”

“Why, Florrie, I didn’t say a word except that men were crazy about Gabriella—­you know I didn’t.  Of course, I talk a great deal,” she pursued in an aggrieved, explanatory tone to Gabriella, “but I never repeat a word—­not a single word that is told me in confidence.  If Julia had asked me not to tell Gabriella what she said, I shouldn’t have dreamed of doing so.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter in the least, Mrs. Spencer,” said Gabriella hastily, “only there isn’t a word of truth in it.”

The becoming flush was still in her cheeks, and she poised a hat over Florrie’s head with a swift, flying grace which Mrs. Spencer had never noticed in her before.  “I wonder if Gabriella can really care about George?” she thought quickly.  “But if it is George she is in love with, why on earth did she start to work in a shop?” Then suddenly, following a flash of light, she reasoned it out to her complete satisfaction.  “It must have been that she didn’t know that George cared—­that is why she is blushing so at this minute.”