seated in the armchair in front of the fire and the elder
anxiously regarding her. Primrose had been fretful ever since hearing
from her mother-in-law of Miss Le Pettit's visit of the day before,
and of the unaccountable interest the heiress had shown in that faggot
of a Loveday, and by now her fretfulness had assumed the size of an
indisposition. In vain did Mrs. Lear try and cosset and comfort her with
potions both hot and cool; Primrose knew well that beneath the kindness
of the farmer's wife lurked the feeling that it was not for one in her
station to indulge in such vapours as might well befit the gentry, and
that she would be cured sooner by taking a broom to the best carpet than
by sitting and keeping the fire warm. Primrose sulked, and even handsome
Willie, leaning by the window, wanting to be away yet dreading the
outburst did he move, could not persuade his wife that nothing ailed her
but too much idleness. Neither, though to their robust health it would
have seemed so, would it have been all the truth, for Primrose was
taking her condition more hardly than most girls who have had the good
fortune to wed with a prosperous young farmer, and the thought that she
would not be able to dance in the procession with the rest of the world
at the Flora had for some time past embittered her. To enter the house,
after her anger with Loveday and the flash of fear that the strange
half-foreign girl had filled her with, only to find that the great Miss
Le Pettit had offered that very girl to dance with her ... this was
poisonous fare indeed for one in the discontented mood of Primrose Lear.
The heaviness of her mind matched with that of her body as she hunched
over the fire.

Sight of Loveday, a Loveday oddly changed from that of the day earlier,
did not ease her sickness; the light in Loveday's eye, the fresh
exhilaration of her step--she, who was wont to slip along with so much
of quiet aloofness--stung the other girl anew. Loveday greeted Mrs. Lear
eagerly before she saw that Primrose was sitting half-hidden by the
wings of the big chair, her face, paler than its wont, in shadow, pallid
like a face seen through still water. Then she saw also handsome Willie,
dark against the small square panes of the window, the April sun gilding
the curve of his ruddy cheek and making the pots of red geraniums along
the sill blaze as brightly as the beautiful blossoms of painted wax
that, under their glass shade, held an example of neat