"You never have a good word for Aunt Rosamond," she cried; "but you need not include me in your judgment, I think!"
Bethune laughed again, harshly.
"I am very hard on Lady Gerardine, am I not?" Then fixing his eyes upon her, broodingly; "and, as for you, I hope——"
He did not finish the sentence. But to her reading, his glance needed no word. She grew rosily shy and ran on ahead to hide it.
"Well, I love the Eastern," said the man, abruptly going back to the origin of the dispute. "He's my trade. He will be the death of me one of these days, no doubt. But what of that? Does not the sailor love the sea that will swallow him. And besides, if they weren't always an uncertain quantity, where would be the spice of life out there? One might as well be in a broker's office. But I don't like your westernised Eastern," he said, with a change of tone, and took a first long step upon the downward way.
Aspasia skipped on before him.
"Well, we're a pretty queer lot down there, in the Old Ancient House," she cried, in her high merry pipe. "What with the Thug plotting—I know he's a Thug, whatever you may say, and I know he's plotting," she gave her companion a challenging blink of her bright eye; "and what with crazy old Mary, who's lived so long in this old hollow that she's positively part of the timber and plaster of the house, and can hear the very stones talk. By the way, she's more creepy than ever now, and swears that her pet ghosts are walking with extra vigour. And what with Jani, running about after Aunt, with her dog eyes and poor chattering teeth! Nothing will ever make me believe that Jani has got a soul. And then, my poor aunt herself, with her hyper-what-you-call-'ems, and Runkle bombarding her with telegrams which she don't even notice, and which I have to answer as best I may. I say," said Aspasia, stopping reflectively, "there will be a fine row, I tell you, soon! For if I know Runkle, he'll pounce, one of these days. And Aunt Rosamond; well, you see for yourself what she is just now. Positively there's only you and I that are sane."
She sprang on again, to look back at him over her shoulder and laugh like a schoolgirl.
His eyes sank before hers. Could she but have guessed on the brink of what ignoble madness he—the sane man—was standing!
CHAPTER X