"Not this morning."
"Aren't you well?" Aspasia sat down on the side of the bed and took her aunt's hands into her firm grasp. There was a conscience-stricken anxiety in the girl's eyes.
"Quite well; but I slept badly."
Baby felt the beat of a slow pulse under her fingers. Relieved but still weighted with a sense of guilt, she bent to kiss the face on the pillow. Lady Gerardine turned her cheek with that tolerant submission to caress that she was wont to display. Then she drew her hands away and gently pushed Aspasia from her.
"Go and dress, you will be late. And tell your uncle that I am trying to sleep."
Still Aspasia hesitated. She would have liked to confess her last night's treachery and be forgiven. But Lady Gerardine, who was never a very approachable person, seemed this morning more distant than ever. And catching sight of the dancing leaves outside, the girl felt the joy of the young day suddenly seize her spirit. She shuffled gaily across the room in her heel-less slippers.
"I'll tell Runkle you're sound asleep and he must not disturb you," she announced with cheerful mendacity, "otherwise you'll have him prowling in and thrusting that thermometer down your throat."
Lady Gerardine laughed a little, but made no protest.—That thermometer!
Then she turned her head and fell to watching the garden window again, glad when across the open spaces she heard at last the crisp repeated rhythm of the horses' feet draw close and ring sharp, as the cavalcade moved up the road by the garden walls, and drop away in the distance.
* * * * *