“Well! What an afternoon! My dear, isn’t she—” Kathie waved her hands to express a superlative beyond the power of words.
“She is!”
“The most fascinating, the most interesting, the most original—”
“And she likes us, too! As much as we like her. Isn’t it glorious?”
“She hasn’t spoken to another soul. How could we have called her plain! Evelyn, did you notice that she never spoke of her husband? She wears grey and violet, so he has probably been dead for some years, but she never referred to him in the slightest possible way.”
“Would it be likely, Kathie, in our very first talk?”
“Yes!” declared Kathie sturdily. “Not intentionally, perhaps, but with ordinary people it would have slipped out. ‘We went to Italy. My husband liked this or that.’ She never advanced even as far as the ‘we’. She must have been dreadfully, dreadfully fond of him!”
I wondered! The death of a beloved husband or wife is a devastating blow; but when the memory is beautiful, time softens it into a hallowed sweetness. It is the bitter sorrow which refuses to be healed, which fills the heart with a ceaseless unrest. Not even to Kathie would I express my doubts, but the conviction weighed upon me that the cloud which hung over Charmion Fane was the remembrance of unhappiness rather than joy!
For the next fortnight the greater part of our time was spent in Charmion’s company; generally we were a party of three, but in every day there came a precious hour or so when I had her alone, and hugged the secret confidence that the tête-à-tête was as welcome to her as to myself.
Everything that was to be told about my own uneventful life she knew before many days were passed, but of her own past she never spoke. From incidental remarks we found that she had been the godchild of a well-known politician long since dead, and that at eighteen she had been presented at Court, which two discoveries proved useful, as they were enough to convince the aunts that Charmion was a safe and desirable acquaintance.