It was on that evening that Aunt Clo, for the first time, spoke with great frankness and intimacy of herself and her own past to Lily.
"You have wondered, little one, why I have never chosen to marry, have you not?" she abruptly demanded, gazing shrewdly at her niece.
Fortunately, Lily felt, the shrewdness was not sufficient to penetrate her own embarrassment and pierce to the true answer of that portentous question.
Lily had always supposed, on the rare occasions when she had given the matter a thought, that Aunt Clo must have remained unmarried because nobody had ever wanted to many her.
It now became almost overwhelmingly evident that such had not been the case.
"Why should I not say it? I have been greatly desired, and by many. Perhaps, bambina, it may help you, if I let you in where so few have ever yet penetrated—into the story of my heart. As a girl I was, perhaps, not beautiful," Miss Stellenthorpe musingly observed without, however, any great conviction in her tone. "Certainly I had not the exquisite daintiness, the porcelain prettiness, that I see in you, my Lily. But I was a strong, vital, passionate creature, and intensely magnetic—that, above all. Had I a daughter possessed of that magnetism, she should be guarded—most carefully guarded. The gift is not one to be played with. I suppose I was reckless. Chi lo sa? Ah well, the years have brought their own chastening, maybe. Oh, not in my proud, solitary virginity—that has been my own choice."
Aunt Clo upreared her head in a sudden, high-souled gesture.
"No. But—ay di me! How I have been loved! And I—I, in my turn have loved, carina. Once—and once only. I cannot tell you the whole story, little one. Some day, perhaps, when you, too, have lived and loved—though may you never touch the depths that I have plumbed! I had rejected many loves—lesser loves, as they seemed to me. Then came one—there is only one, in a woman's life. Our souls rushed together—une veritable fusion d'âmes. There was one summer——"
Aunt Clo became lost in retrospect, her fine eyes fixed upon some point of the horizon far above Lily's head.
When she spoke again, her voice had flattened dramatically.