"Yes, of course," she said gaily, "you were so young then, all you saw in me was a woman with a grown-up son."
Her dress was pinned up, she held in her hand the bonnet which she said made her look like an old gipsy woman, and the sunlight fell on the red hair, now grown a little thinner, but each of the immaculate teeth was an elegant piece of statuary, and not a wrinkle was there on that pretty, vixen-like face. Her figure especially showed no signs of age, and if she and her daughters were in the room it was she I admired.
One day, while seeking through the store-room for a sheet of brown paper to pack up a book in, I came across a pile of old Athenaeums. Had I happened upon a set of drawings by Raphael I could not have been more astonished. Not one, but twenty copies of the Athenaeum in a house where never a book was read. I looked at the dates--three-and-thirty years ago. At that moment she was gathering some withering apples from the floor.
"Whoever," I cried, "could have left these copies of the Athenaeum here?"
"Oh, they are my Athenaeums," she said. "I always used to read the Athenaeum when I was engaged to be married to Mr. Bartlett. You must have heard of him--he wrote that famous book about the Euphrates. I was very fond of reading in those days, and he and I used to talk about books in the old garden at Wandsworth. It is all built over now."
This sudden discovery of dead tastes and sympathies seemed to draw us closer together, and in the quietness of the store-room, amid the odour of the apples, her face flushed with all the spirit of her girlhood, and I understood her as if I had lived it with her.
"You must have been a delightful girl. I believe if I had known you then I should have asked you to marry me."
"I believe you would, Kant.... So you thought because I never read books now that I had never read any? You have no idea how fond of books I was once, and if I had married Mr. Bartlett I believe I should have been quite a blue-stocking. But then Dick came, and my father thought it a more suitable match, and I had young children to look after. We were very poor in those days; the old Squire never attempted to help us."
At this time I seemed to be always with my friends; I came to see them when I pleased, and sometimes I stayed a week, sometimes I stayed six months: but however long my visit they said it was not long enough. The five-o'clock from London brought me down in time for dinner, and I used to run up to my room just as if I were a member of the family. If I missed this train and came down by the six-o'clock, I found them at dinner, and then the lamplight seemed to accentuate our affectionate intimacy, and to pass round the table shaking hands with them all was in itself a peculiar delight. On one of these occasions, missing her from her place, I said: "Surely you have not allowed her to remain till this hour in the garden?"
I was told that she was ill, and had been for the last fortnight confined to her room. Several days passed; allusion to her illness became more frequent; and then I heard that the local doctor would accept the responsibility no longer, and had demanded a consultation with a London physician. But she would not hear of so much expense for her sake, and declared herself to be quite sufficiently well to go to London.