"There will always be time," answered the colonel, enigmatically.
"As there will always be air, I suppose; and that will not matter to us, when we are not here to breathe it any more."
"That is true. Nothing will matter very much a hundred years hence."
"But a few years matter much more than a hundred." Her voice was sad.
"What are you thinking of?" asked Colonel Wimpole, changing his position so as to see her face better.
He resented her sadness a little, for he and his sister were doing their best to make her happy. But Sylvia did not answer him. She bent her white forehead to the faint breeze that came through the closed green blinds, and she looked at the etching. The colonel believed that she was thinking of her dead mother, whom she had loved. He hesitated, choosing his words, for he hated preaching, and yet it seemed to him that Sylvia mourned too long.
"I was very fond of your mother, too, my dear," he said gently, after a time. "She was like a real sister to us. I wish I could have gone instead, and left her to you."
"You?" Sylvia's voice startled him; she was suddenly pale, and the old print shook in her hands. "Oh, no!" she cried half passionately. "Not you--not you!"
The colonel was surprised for a moment. Then he was grateful, for he felt that she was very fond of him. He thought of the woman he loved, and that he might have had such a daughter as Sylvia, but with other eyes.
"I am glad you are fond of me," he said. "You are very good to me, and I know I am a tiresome old man."