"Mean?" he said. "Why, Miss Aspasia, what should it mean? Something perhaps that your kind heart would find hard to understand. But it means, after all, nothing so very unusual. Lady Gerardine, and it is all the better for her, is of those who are quickly consoled. The country air is doing her good, and the old letters——" he dropped her hand, his tones grew incisive. "It is only when the past is more satisfactory than the present that memories are disagreeable."
"Oh," cried Aspasia. She started to her feet. "What a funny way you have of saying that!" And as the meaning of his words forced itself upon her, "How unkind! I think you hate Aunt Rosamond."
"I?" said he, startled. He rose in his turn. "What an absurd idea!" He laughed, but his lips seemed stiff. "I?—I would not presume, how could I? to have any feeling for Lady Gerardine but that of distant respect."
The door opened and in came Rosamond.
"In the dark!" she said, looking upon them unseeingly after the light of the hall. "Is that Major Bethune?"
She came forward, while Aspasia, on her knees, violently poked the fire into a blaze.
"Rose of the World," thought Bethune, as the ruddy glow fell upon the figure of his friend's widow. It was true she looked like a girl. Her cheek was rose-red from the cold wind. Her shadowed eyes brilliant. The light tendrils of her hair floated back from her white forehead.
"You are welcome," she said, and mingled with her grace and sweetness there was a timidity which was as exquisite and as indescribable an addition to her beauty as the bloom to the purple of the grape or the mist to the line of the hills at dawn. He bowed over her hand. He felt angry with himself that he had no word to say.
"Tea?" said Aspasia. As he took the cup from her to pass it to Lady Gerardine, he heard the spoon clink against the saucer with the trembling of his own hand.
CHAPTER VI