in, Fleur walking demurely.

"It's quite wonderful in there," she said dreamily to Holly.

Jon preserved silence, hoping against hope that she might be thinking it
swift.

She bade him a casual and demure good-night, which made him think he had
been dreaming....

In her bedroom Fleur had flung off her gown, and, wrapped in a shapeless
garment, with the white flower still in her hair, she looked like a
mousme, sitting cross-legged on her bed, writing by candlelight.
"DEAREST CHERRY,

"I believe I'm in love. I've got it in the neck, only the feeling is
really lower down. He's a second cousin-such a child, about six months
older and ten years younger than I am. Boys always fall in love with
their seniors, and girls with their juniors or with old men of forty.
Don't laugh, but his eyes are the truest things I ever saw; and he's
quite divinely silent! We had a most romantic first meeting in London
under the Vospovitch Juno. And now he's sleeping in the next room and
the moonlight's on the blossom; and to-morrow morning, before anybody's
awake, we're going to walk off into Down fairyland. There's a feud
between our families, which makes it really exciting. Yes! and I may
have to use subterfuge and come on you for invitations--if so, you'll
know why! My father doesn't want us to know each other, but I can't help
that. Life's too short. He's got the most beautiful mother, with lovely
silvery hair and a young face with dark eyes. I'm staying with his
sister--who married my cousin; it's all mixed up, but I mean to pump her
to-morrow. We've often talked about love being a spoil-sport; well,
that's all tosh, it's the beginning of sport, and the sooner you feel it,
my dear, the better for you.

"Jon (not simplified spelling, but short for Jolyon, which is a name in
my family, they say) is the sort that lights up and goes out; about five
feet ten, still growing, and I believe he's going to be a poet. If you
laugh at me I've done with you forever. I perceive all sorts of
difficulties, but you know when I really want a thing I get it. One of
the chief effects of love is that you see the air sort of inhabited, like
seeing a face in the moon; and you feel--you feel dancey and soft at the
same time, with a funny sensation--like a continual first sniff of
orange--blossom--Just above your stays. This is my first, and I feel as
if it were going to be my last, which is absurd, of course, by all the
laws of Nature and mora