"
She sank down into the low-seated rocker with a native grace which
could not escape the beauty-loving eye of the girl, and with
proud-poised head and silent tongue listened to Frona as the minutes
ticked away, and observed with impersonal amusement Frona's painful
toil at making conversation.
"What has she come for?" Frona asked herself, as she talked on furs
and weather and indifferent things.
"If you do not say something, Lucile, I shall get nervous, soon," she
ventured at last in desperation. "Has anything happened?"
Lucile went over to the mirror and picked up, from among the trinkets
beneath, a tiny open-work miniature of Frona. "This is you? How old
were you?"
"Sixteen."
"A sylph, but a cold northern one."
"The blood warms late with us," Frona reproved; "but is--"
"None the less warm for that," Lucile laughed. "And how old are you
now?"
"Twenty."
"Twenty," Lucile repeated, slowly. "Twenty," and resumed her seat.
"You are twenty. And I am twenty-four."
"So little difference as that!"
"But our blood warms early." Lucile voiced her reproach across the
unfathomable gulf which four years could not plumb.
Frona could hardly hide her vexation. Lucile went over and looked at
the miniature again and returned.
"What do you think of love?" she asked abruptly, her face softening
unheralded into a smile.
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