In a half-hour she came slowly down the stairs, untwisting a long string
of her mother's abandoned pearls, great pear-shaped things full of the
pale lustre of gibbous moons. She wore a dress of white samarcand, with
a lavish ornament like threads and purfiles of gold upon the bodice, and
Ursule followed with a cloak. As she entered the drawing-room, the great
bunches of white azalea, which her mother had brought from the swamps,
caught her eye; she threw down the pearls, and broke off rapid dusters
of the queenly flowers, touching the backward-curling hyacinthine
petals, and caressingly passing her finger down the pale purple shadow
of the snowy folds. Directly afterward she hung them in her breezy hair,
from which, by natural tenure, they were not likely to fall, bound them
over her shoulders and in her waist.

"See! I stand like Summer," she said, "wrapped in perfume; it is
intoxicating."

Just then two hands touched her, and her father bent his face over her.
She flung her arms round him, careless of their fragile array, kissed
him on both cheeks, laughed, and kissed him again. She did not speak,
for he disliked French, and English sometimes failed her.

"Here is Mr. Heath," her father said.

She partly turned, touched that gentleman's hand with the ends of her
fingers, and nodded. Her father whispered a brief sentence in her ear.

"_Jamais, Monsieur, jamais!_" she exclaimed; then, with a quick gesture
of deprecation, moved again toward him; but Mr. Laudersdale had coldly
passed to make his compliments to Mrs. Heath.