Four windows at the other end of the room looked out on to the garden, but were now closed, for it was a cold afternoon, and the driving rain beat against the glass and on the leafless trees outside. A blazing fire in the old fashioned fireplace with its quaint Dutch tiles, a low table drawn near the hearth, on which stood the tea service, and Miss Varlins in a chair knitting quietly, while Florry flitted about the room like a restless fairy in the waning light.
A handsome woman, Judith Varlins, with a proud, dark face, and a somewhat stern expression, which always relaxed to tenderness when it rested on the diminutive form of Florry. And that young lady was very tiny, more like a piece of Dresden china than anything else, with her delicate complexion, her piquant face, glittering golden hair, and dainty figure. Clothed in white--Miss Marson always affected white--in some lacy material, soft and delicate like a cobweb, she formed a strong contrast to the sombre beauty of Judith in her plain, black silk dress.
And the little figure went flitting here and there, now at the windows, looking out into the chill twilight, then bending over some great bunch of flowers inhaling the perfume, at the piano striking a few random chords, hovering round the tea table, flashing into the red firelight, melting into the cold shadows, like to some will-o'-the-wisp, some phantom, some restless shadow rather than anything of this earth.
"Florry, my pet," said Judith, at length, pausing in her knitting, "you will tire yourself running about so much." Whereupon the fairy floated airily towards the fire, and settled lightly down, like thistledown, on a footstool, where she sat clasping her knees with her arms with a cross expression of countenance, a very discontented fairy indeed.
"For really," she said, at length, pursuing a train of thought that was in her shallow mind, "to be called Spolger--Mrs. Jackson Spolger. It's horrid! so is he. The monster!"
"Florry, Florry! don't talk like that about your future husband," remonstrated Judith; "it's not nice, my dearest."
"Neither is he," retorted Miss Marson, resting her chin on her knees and staring into the fire; "he's so lean, like a skeleton, and so crabbed--oh, so crabbed."