"Oh?"
And Alexina, knew that he had never mentioned that visit.
"But he looks much much older."
"He did before he left. That horrible experience of his seemed to prey on him more and more.
"Oh."
He had not looked a day over twenty-three on that afternoon at Eincona, two weeks after the fire.
Alexina replaced the picture, then turned to her sister-in-law with a coaxing smile. "Are you engaged? It would be too romantic. Do tell me."
"No," said Gora, shortly. "We are not engaged. Good friends, that is all, and write occasionally."
"Well, he must be very much interested—and you must be a very interesting correspondent, Gora dear! Is he? Interesting, I mean. What does he do, anyhow? I have a vague remembrance that he said something about the army."
"He was in the army, the Grenadier Guards. But he has resigned and gone into business with a cousin of his in Lancashire. He wrote me—oh, it must be nearly two years ago—that if there should be a war he would enlist as a matter of course, but as there was no prospect of any, and he was sick of idleness—his good middle-class energetic blood asserting itself, he said,—he was going to amuse himself with work, incidentally try to make a fortune. His mother left a good deal of money, but there are several children and I guess the present earl needs most of it to keep up his estates, to say nothing of his position. Fotten law, that—entail, I mean."