"A trick," echoed Aspasia, indignantly. "No such thing!" She surveyed the important hand, with head on one side and an air of great complacency. Yet never had it appeared a more childish object. Upon the pink out-thrust finger the wedding-ring seemed absurdly misplaced.
"Baby, Baby, how is it you have never told me? Major Bethune, of course?"
"Yes," said the bride, suddenly shy. "They would not let me tell you. Idiots!"
The next instant the two women were clasped in each other's arms—both crying a little, as they kissed.
"There now," cried the new wife, at last, awakening to the conviction that she was hardly carrying out the doctor's instructions; and, indeed, it was evident that, left to her own devices, Aspasia had peculiar views upon the art of breaking news. "There now, this won't do. You lie still, and I'll tell you everything."
Placidly enough to reassure a more anxious nurse, Rosamond obeyed, her hand creeping down to her letter once more. This was but a surface agitation, after all—there was only one in the world who had power to stir the deeps.
Aspasia knelt down by the bed, and began to pour forth her story.... They had been engaged, oh, ever so long; but she never would have dreamed of anything so preposterous as marriage, especially now—not for ages, at least, but Raymond had ramped so....
It was only from the youthful Mrs. Bethune's picturesque tongue that such a description of Bethune's reticent wooing could have fallen.
And then something had happened, out there, and his blessed leave was curtailed, and, he had said, he positively would not go without her. "And so," said Baby, laughing and crying together, as pretty and absurd a spring bride as it was possible to see; "so he came down from London yesterday—with a special licence in his pocket—he went to the Inn, but he came to see me last night. I don't know how it happened, but we were married this morning, at the little church—you know, your little church, Aunt Rosamond.... Did you ever hear of such a thing? Without a trousseau, without a present, without a lawyer, without a cake! And I am going to Vienna for my honeymoon."
She laughed a little wildly, and dabbed her wet cheeks with a corner of the sheet. Then she stopped suddenly, abashed. Rosamond's eyes were lost in space; she was not even listening.