"You could get me to do anything!" I exclaimed. "You're a witch, and what's more, I believe you're a beauty. Great Scott! How you grow on one! Can this be why—because you are You—that in my heart of hearts I don't care a rap if Nell and Phyllis are engaged to others? I wonder if my instinct saw under the gray hair and blue glasses? Look here, are you Miss or Mrs. Mary Milton? and if you're Mrs., are you a widow, grass, or otherwise?"
She laughed. "Why, how old do you take me to be? As an aunt, my official age was over forty. But Miss Mary Milton isn't much more than half Lady MacNairne's age. It's as good to throw off the years as the wig and the spectacles. I'm only twenty-three. I haven't had time to marry yet, thank goodness!"
"Thank goodness!" I echoed. "And thank goodness for You as you are. You seem to me perfect."
"But I should never have done like this, for an aunt."
"Certainly not. But to think I should have been wasting you all this time as a mere aunt!"
"I wasn't wasted. I saved you lots of things—if I didn't save you money. Really, I did earn my salary—though you often thought me officious."
"Never!"
"Not when I kept you from proposing to Nell Van Buren?"
"That was a blessing in disguise."
"Like myself. But truly, I only did it to spare you humiliation in the end. I knew all along that she was in love with Rudolph Brederode—though perhaps she wouldn't have found it out so soon if it hadn't been for me."