) This morning he found a bunch of white roses, still
wet with dew and so fragrant that the whole room was fresh and sweet with
their odor, prettily arranged in a bowl on the table, and, at his plate,
the largest of all with a pin through the stem. He looked up, smilingly,
and nodded at the red-haired girl. "Thank you, Charmion," he said. "That's
very pretty."
She turned even redder than she always was, and answered nothing,
vigorously darting her brush at an imaginary fly on the cloth. After
several minutes she said abruptly, "You're welcome."
There was a silence, finally broken by a long, gasping sigh. Astonished,
he looked at the girl. Her eyes were set unfathomably upon his pink tie;
the wand had dropped from her nerveless hand, and she stood rapt and
immovable. She started violently from her trance. "Ain't you goin' to
finish your coffee?" she asked, plying her instrument again, and, bending
over him slightly, whispered: "Say, Eph Watts is over there behind you."
At a table in a far corner of the room a large gentleman in a brown frock
coat was quietly eating his breakfast and reading the "Herald." He was of
an ornate presence, though entirely neat. A sumptuous expanse of linen
exhibited itself between the lapels of his low-cut waistcoat, and an inch
of bediamonded breastpin glittered there, like an ice-ledge on a snowy
mountain side.
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