"I thought you were prejudiced against him," said Christabel, very slowly.
"Why, so I was, till I saw him," answered Leonard, with the friendliest air. "I fancied he was one of your sickly, sentimental twaddlers, with long hair, and a taste for poetry; but I find he is a fine, manly fellow, with no nonsense about him. So I asked him here, and insisted upon his saying yes. He didn't seem to want to come, which is odd, for he made himself very much at home here in my mother's time, I've heard. However, he gave in when I pressed him; and he'll be here by dinner-time to-morrow."
"By dinner-time," thought Mopsy, delighted. "Then he'll see us first by candlelight, and first impressions may do so much."
"Isn't it almost like a fairy tale?" said Dopsy, as they were dressing for dinner, with a vague recollection of having cultivated her imagination in childhood. She had never done so since that juvenile age. "Just as we were sighing for the prince he comes."
"True," said Mopsy; "and he will go, just as all the other fairy princes have gone, leaving us alone upon the dreary high road, and riding off to the fairy princesses who have good homes, and good clothes, and plenty of money."
The high-art toilets were postponed for the following evening, so that the panoply of woman's war might be fresh; and on that evening Mopsy and Dopsy, their long limbs sheathed in sea-green velveteen, Toby-frills round their necks, and sunflowers on their shoulders, were gracefully grouped near the fireplace in the pink and white panelled drawing-room, waiting for Mr. Hamleigh's arrival.
"I wonder why all the girls make themselves walking advertisements of the Sun Fire Office," speculated Mr. Montagu, taking a prosaic view of the Vandeleur sunflowers, as he sat by Miss Bridgeman's work-basket.
"Don't you know that sunflowers are so beautifully Greek?" asked Jessie. "They have been the only flower in fashion since Alma Tadema took to painting them--fountains, and marble balustrades, and Italian skies, and beautiful women, and sunflowers."
"Mr. Hamleigh!" said the butler at the open door, and Angus came in, and went straight to Christabel, who was sitting opposite the group of sea-green Vandeleurs, slowly fanning herself with a big black fan.