And, of course, Mrs. Burke was human enough to be delighted with such a compliment.
The day came when Rowena went down to Sussex to her sister-in-law's home. Geraldine welcomed her warmly, and her gentle old mother received her with old-fashioned sweetness and courtesy. The children were grown almost beyond recognition, but the little boys, Buttons and Bertie, remembered her, and flung themselves into her arms.
"You are looking thin and worn," commented Geraldine. "Mother, we must feed her up, and treat her like an invalid. She must not go to her bridegroom a bag of bones."
Rowena put her hands up to her cheeks, with her happy laugh.
"Spare my blushes; I am not going to be married yet."
"How long are you going to keep him waiting? Now come and sit down and let me talk to you for your good. You have a most unhappy trait of attaching yourself like a vice to any people you meet or places in which you may find yourself. Look at your year in that God-forsaken place, Abertarlie. Who but you would ever stick out a whole winter there?"
Rowena's face grew very soft and grave.
"Not 'God-forsaken,' Geraldine, for I found Him there!"
"My dear, I know; it was the desolation of it drove you to seek consolation in religion. Now you have attached yourself to this old freak Mrs. Burke. I never approved of it from the first. If I had not known she was treating you well, I would have moved heaven and earth to get you away. You have forsaken us for her. You are even making Hugh Macdonald step aside and take the second place. He must be a saint to wait so patiently."
"My dear Geraldine, we have only been engaged four or five months. He is not a young man, nor am I a very young woman. There is no occasion for us to rush into marriage so precipitously."