“No, that is not agreeing with me,” said Muriel, with a frank smile. “Life is sufficiently life in loving. To love is enough.—But come, dear Emily, your chocolate voice shall not be used in discussion, but in confession. We must talk this morning, for I fancy you have some little grudge against me, and it is time for us to understand each other, like good friends.”
Emily colored again, and the tears were very near her eyes. She loved Muriel, yet could not help being jealous of her, believing, as she did, that she was her rival for the love of Wentworth. But she laughed lightly, dissembling her emotion, and asked:
“Why is my voice a chocolate voice, Muriel? That is an odd epithet.”
“A very good one, dear,” replied Muriel, laughing, and picking up the Dante from the floor. “Your voice is a contralto. Sounds, you know, have their analogical colors, as Madame de Staël knew when she said the sound of the trumpet was crimson. Now the analogue of contralto is brown. Chocolate, too, is brown. Hence your voice is chocolate.”
“Well done, Muriel! Come, now, that is really ingenious.”
Muriel laughed her clear and mellow silver laugh, and looked playfully at Emily.
“Thank you for the compliment, _mignonne_. I shall make it over to the gentleman from whom I stole the idea.”
“Guess again, dear! But _n’importe_—no matter. Come and sit here with me.”
Muriel moved smilingly away to a couch of violet-velvet, and sinking upon the cushioned seat, waved her hand to her friend. Emily stood unheeding, in an attitude of sumptuous repose, with her rounded arms folded, a faint smile on her face, and her lustrous and lambent eyes half-veiled by their long lashes. The damask color was bright on her cheeks and on her parted lips, and with every slow breath, her bosom slowly lifted and fell, stirring the rich and heavy attar-of-rose odor which brooded slumberously about her form.
“Thou gorgeous queen-rose of Ispahan, why dreamest thou?” said Muriel’s voice of silver mockery. “Didst thou not hear me call? Come, I say!”
The beautiful brunette did not obey, but raised her proud patrician head from its drooping curve, and vaguely sighed. Muriel rose, lightly glided over to her, clasped her waist with both arms, and standing a little on one side and bending forward—a fresh and full-grown lily—a fair, gay woman, with the grace and glimmer of a bewitching child in her womanhood—looked with a naive and radiant, half-mocking, half-serious smile, into the face of her she had called the gorgeous queen-rose of Ispahan. Presently she began to lead her to the couch. Emily held back, but Muriel’s clasp tightened, and yielding to the firm, fairy strength with which, though strong, she was unable to cope, Emily suffered herself to be conducted to the seat.