When Aspasia returned from her ride she found her aunt seemingly in the same attitude; the long white hands folded, she could have sworn, exactly as she had last seen them; the deep-dreaming eyes still gazing out of the window.
"I declare," cried the girl, "you lazy thing!" but there was still a shade of uneasiness in her voice and in her glance. "Are not you ashamed of yourself?"
"Not at all," said Rosamond, "I've had a very happy time. And you?"
"Hot, hot," said Aspasia, flinging her Panama hat across the room and rubbing her forehead. Her cheeks had grown pale and there were moist dark rings round her eyes.
"I have had the better part, I think," said Lady Gerardine.
"Not you," said Baby, as she dumped her solid weight on her favourite corner of the bed. "It's been delightful, delicious. I've never enjoyed a ride so much." Her bright hazel gaze misted over in remembrance. "Oh dear," said she, "how can you lie there! You're quite young, Aunt Rosamond, but I think your idea of happiness is like a cat's. You just like to sit still and blink and think. And even the cats romp about—at night," she added, parenthetically.
"Oh, I don't even think, or care to think much," said the other in that indulgent half-playful manner which she reserved for her niece, to whom she talked more as if she were five years old than eighteen. "While you were out I let my soul swing on that great green leaf over there by the window. Do you see it, Baby? It is beginning to catch a ray of sunlight now and shines like a golden emerald."
"Gracious!" cried the girl.
"I think it is partly," said Rosamond, pursuing her own thoughts, "because of this vivid passionate land, where every one lives so intensely. No wonder, poor things, their ideal of complete happiness over here is Nirwana! I am glad, Baby, that we shall soon be in our placid England again, where people go from the cradle to the grave, quietly as along a grey road green-hedged, from a cottage gate to a sleeping churchyard."
"I am glad, too, we are going to England," cried Aspasia, catching up one phrase of her aunt's speech and neglecting the main idea. "I met Major Bethune, this morning," she said, half-bashful, half-defiant, "and he's going home on leave, too."