"You certainly gave them an example of how to make eyes at fifteen or twenty fellows, one after another," laughed her brother, at her side. "You'd have had them all coming, Rosy, if they hadn't been tied up to their respective girls. A lesson or two from you, and those girls would begin to play 'round in proper shape."
"Rosy's going to stay and take a few lessons herself," insinuated Jeannette, who sat with her shapely young arm resting upon her father's knee, as she occupied the step below him. "I'll promise to put some flesh on her little bones if she's here a month. She's too thin, after only her second season."
"Oh, I'll stay," promised Rosalie promptly. "I simply love it here; I'm crazy to stay!"
"It's all very well now," came Aunt Olivia's low murmur in Georgiana's ear--there had been many of such murmurs in the same ear during the afternoon and evening, though why, Georgiana herself could not guess, since the elder woman knew the younger to be unreservedly committed to upholding Jeannette's whole course--"very well now, in June, with flowers blooming and friends about, but how the poor child is going to face a second winter I can't imagine."
"She faced the first one very happily," Georgiana reminded her.
"The first one was a novelty and of course she was determined not to acknowledge how lonely she must often have been. I do not say that James Stuart is not a very attractive and trustworthy young man; I am fond of him myself--very. But I shall always feel that Jeannette has made a terrible mistake. Brought up as she has been, it is not conceivable that she should continue to find this sort of life possible."
It was with this moan in her ears that, a few minutes later, Georgiana listened to James Stuart. He had drawn her away from the group and was strolling with her across the lawn.
"Well, George, tell me your honest opinion. Is my wife happy?"
It was a blunt question, but Georgiana understood. He asked it not to be reassured but because he was confident of the answer.
She spoke guardedly: "I never saw her seem more so, Jimps. You are sure of it yourself?"
"I want you to ask her point-blank. Will you?"
"It's not the sort of question to ask anybody point-blank, is it?"