"
It had. It was upon a small table in the rose and gold boudoir.
And the sun, shining softly in at the creeper-shaded window,
rejoiced in the surpassing brightness and cleanness of the dishes
of silver and thinnest porcelain and cut glass. Margaret thought
eating in bed a "filthy, foreign fad," and never indulged in it.
She seated herself lazily, drank her coffee, and ate her roll and
her egg slowly, deliberately, reading her letters and glancing at
the paper. A charming picture she made--the soft, white
Valenciennes of her matinee falling away from her throat and
setting off the clean, smooth healthiness of her skin, the
blackness of her vital hair; from the white lace of her
petticoat's plaited flounces peered one of her slim feet, a satin
slipper upon the end of it. At the top of the heap of letters lay
one she would have recognized, she thought, had she never seen the
handwriting before.
"Sure to be upsetting," reflected she; and she laid it aside,
glancing now and then at the bold, nervous, irregular hand and
speculating about the contents and about the writer.
She had gone to bed greatly disturbed in mind as to whether she
was doing well to marry the obstreperous Westerner.
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