Mrs. Hancock had settled that her climax was to be Egypt. The patience-table perhaps was the least sensational of the benefits, and she was going to begin with that.
"I have often noticed lately, dear," she said, "what an interest you take in my patience, so much so indeed, Elizabeth, that we've had not a note of music in the evening for a week past, though I've thought sometimes that I have seen Edward looking at the piano as if he would like to hear how you are getting on. Look, there is the Old Mill. Will you tell Denton to stop, so that we can enjoy looking at it? So I thought to myself the other night, or perhaps a little bird whispered it to me, that you would like to play patience, too, in the evening. And so you shall, dear. You shall have my patience-table all for your very own, and I will get another one for myself. Mind, Elizabeth, it is not lent you to use only as you use the other things in the house, but it is quite yours, the moment my other table comes from the stores. You may take it back to India if you wish, when you go. When you go."
"Oh, that is kind, dear Aunt Julia," said the girl. "But why should you give it me, and go to the expense of a new one? I enjoy seeing you play just as much as I should enjoy playing myself."
Mrs. Hancock wondered if this was really true. Her generosity about taking the table to India, which so neatly introduced the next topic, had been an unpremeditated flash. Of course, if Elizabeth did not want to play patience, there was no kind of reason for getting a new table. But luckily at this moment she remembered "King of Mexico," which, employing four packs, could not be properly laid out on the table she at present used.
"My dear, I am determined you shall have a table of your own," she said, "to take to India with you if you wish. And perhaps you noticed that I said 'when you go,' and repeated it. That brings me on to my second plan. I should enjoy, dear, I should really enjoy your stopping on here after Edith and Edward are married; then you will no longer share the little treats, like having a drive in my motor, with Edith, but you can come out in it whenever I go, twice a day if you like. And if you like, you shall have Edith's room, and I shall make Mrs. Williams and Lind and all of them quite understand that you are to take Edith's place. You shan't be a visitor any more. Arundel shall be your English home."
"Oh, Aunt Julia——!" began Elizabeth.
"No; wait a minute. You shall have all my plans together. Here you will be all October, with your own patience-table, and Edith's room, until I go to Egypt in November. And then, and then, my dear, you shall come with me. I have written to your father, and we have quite arranged it. You will be absolutely one of our party, and when Edith and Edward join us, as they will do at Cairo—oh, look at those starlings, what a quantity!—when they join us at Cairo we will all go up the Nile together and see everything there is to be seen. How busy we shall be, you and I, all October, my dear, reading all sorts of learned books; I am sure you will read aloud very well with a little practice. We shall be quite a pair of blue-stockings when we meet Edith and Edward again, and be able to tell them all sorts of interesting things about the Greeks and ancient Egyptians. We will take your patience-table with us, for it shuts up more conveniently than any table I have ever seen, and I dare say I shall often ask you for the loan of it, if you will be so kind as to lend it me. And then we shall all come down the Nile together, such a happy party, and I know very well, dear Elizabeth, that when we come to part, and you go on to India from wherever it is that the boats call, I for one shall miss you very much indeed."
Mrs. Hancock had warmed herself up into the most pleasurable glow of generosity, and felt that all these wonderful plans, which, as a matter of fact, had been made solely with a view to her own comfort, were entirely due to her altruistic desire for Elizabeth's delight. Her self-deception was complete and triumphant; she had for the time quite lost sight of the undoubted fact that she had thought of herself and herself only in the making of them. She had secured an excuse for a new patience-table, a companion during what would have otherwise been a month of loneliness, and, at no expense to herself, of somebody who would look after her in Egypt and be devoted to her comfort. She fully expected a burst of gratitude, a rapturous and scarcely credulous assent from the girl.
Elizabeth sat quite silent for a moment.
"Oh, Aunt Julia, it is sweet of you," she said, "but I think it is all quite impossible. I must go back to India; I must get back to father."