The unsuspecting Maria replied that if her lady’s tongue had a bitter taste she must be bilious and needed some calomel. She was sure the fruit and the candy were all right. “Take them all away. I will go down to the conservatory for some flowers,” was the impatient reply. She glanced in the long mirror as she passed and saw that she was looking her loveliest in the turquoise blue silk dinner gown with fluffy lace all about it and pearls on her neck and in her hair--the golden hair that was like an aureole about her lovely head. Rupert thought that golden hair was the prettiest in the world; he often told Eva so. She was glad that Ada’s was not golden--just a lovely chestnut brown. She went slowly, nervously, down to the drawing-room, and as she passed near the curtains that divided it from the reception room the sound of low voices mixed with laughter came to her ears. Their gayety went like a sword through Eva’s heart. It seemed to her as if he must indeed be in love with Ada. She wondered how she would feel if he should fall in love with Ada and marry her, and her aching heart replied: “I should envy her so bitterly I could never bear the sight of her again!” She darted away from the curtains lest she should catch herself listening to their words and hear some chance sentence that would break her heart. The possibility of his loving and marrying another had seldom occurred to her mind before. Though she had sent him away from her in the moment of their bridal, with cruel words on her lips, he still seemed in some subtle sense to belong to her. She secretly resented the bare idea of his turning from his hopeless love to find happiness with another. How sweet and still it was in the mellow light of the conservatory. The flowers threw out rich odors, and the fountain tinkled low music as it dripped back into the marble basin where the goldfish swam. Eva wandered from flower to flower, laying her hot, burning cheeks against their cool, dewy leaves and pinning some white jasmine flowers on her breast for their sweet odor. She murmured: “He has been here almost an hour now, I am sure. I should think he would be going now, if he is so very busy at the hospital--unless he is in love with Ada and hates to tear himself away! I wonder what they have been talking of so long! Old times in Weston, I suppose, and of where he has been since he left there. Will they speak of me? Does he think it would be only politeness if I should go in a minute and thank him for what he did for me the other day? It would look rude otherwise. I ought to speak to him--just a minute!” Eva could not withstand the subtle tempting of her eager heart that was drawing her by yearning cords to the presence of Doctor Ludington. She turned with a thrill of ardent pleasure to seek his presence. “Will he be glad to see me? Or sorry that I interrupted his tête-à-tête with Ada?” she wondered.