“You have not seen your aunt for a long time,” Ellen said to young Lloyd, when they were sitting out a dance after their waltz together.
“Not since—I—I came on—with my father when he died,” he replied. Again Ellen looked at him with that wonderful pity in her face, and again the young man thought he had never seen such a girl.
“I think your aunt is beautiful,” Ellen said, presently, gazing across at Cynthia.
“Yes, she must have been a beauty when she was young.”
“I think she is now,” said Ellen, quite fervently, for she was able to disabuse her mind of associations and rely upon pure observation, and it was quite true that leaving out of the question Cynthia's age and the memory of her face in stronger lights at closer view, she was as beautiful from where they sat as some graceful statue. Only clear outlines showed at that distance, and her soft hair, which was quite white, lay in heavy masses around the intense repose of her face.
“Yes—s,” admitted Robert, somewhat hesitatingly. “She used to think everything of me when I was a little shaver,” he said.
“Doesn't she now?”
“Oh yes, I suppose she does, but it is different now. I am grown up. A man doesn't need so much done for him when he is grown up.”
Then again he looked at Ellen with eyes of pleading which would have made of the older woman what he remembered her to have been in his childhood, and hers answered again.
Robert did not say anything to her about the valedictory until just before the close of the evening, when their last dance together was over.