"I knew you did not want me," said Aspasia—a very different quality of tears welling up.
Rosamond started:
"I, not want you! Why, Baby, what makes you say that?"
"Oh," cried the girl, with a swift change of mood, "how can you want me, have you not got him? Dear Aunt Rosamond, darling Aunt Rosamond, don't keep him waiting any more!"
She was going to cast herself upon the bed in another fervent embrace, when something in Rosamond's look arrested her. Here were the deeps astir! It was as if a flame enkindled in a fragile lamp, as if she could see it tremble and burn.
She drew back before a mystery to which she vaguely felt she would never have the key.
"You know, he will return to-day," stammered she at last. "It's all right about his business. He is coming back."
"I know," answered Harry English's wife, in a low vibrating voice. Then she hesitated, and turned to look at the girl, a wistful inquiry in her shadowed eyes.
"Have they told him?" she asked, under her breath, raising one of the heavy white locks that lay across her breast.
"Oh," exclaimed Aspasia, springing to her meaning, "but you are beautiful with it, you are more beautiful than ever! No—I don't know if they've told him. Oh, darling," she cried, melting all into tenderness, pity, and amusement, as over a child, "it wasn't for that, it could not be for that, you wouldn't see him?"