"Her great-aunts kept her. The same women, Miss Eliza and Miss Letitia Redfield, that had raised her mother. Matilda's mother was their sister. Miss Asenath, the third aunt, is a cripple. You must know her some day, Elinor. She is 'pure beauty' and pure everything else. And what a friend she was to me when I needed her!"
"How old would she be?"
"Who, Miss Asenath? About seventy."
"No, of course not, dear goose! Arethusa."
"Oh, I don't know. Eighteen, I suppose. Yes, just about."
Elinor looked for a moment as if she did not believe what she had heard him say.
"Ross Worthington!"
"I'm all attention."
"Am I to understand that you actually haven't seen that child for eighteen whole years!"
"You are."