It was now Marcella's turn to colour. Aldous Raeburn crossed the room, greeted Lady Winterbourne, and next moment she felt her hand in his.
"You did tell me, Aldous, didn't you," said Lady Winterbourne, "that
Miss Boyce was a great reader?"
The speaker had known Aldous Raeburn as a boy, and was, moreover, a sort of cousin, which explained the Christian name.
Aldous smiled.
"I said I thought Miss Boyce was like you and me, and had a weakness that way, Lady Winterbourne. But I won't be cross-examined!"
"I don't think I am a great reader," said Marcella, bluntly—"at least I read a great deal, but I hardly ever read a book through. I haven't patience."
"You want to get at everything so quickly?" said Miss Raeburn, looking up sharply.
"I suppose so!" said Marcella. "There seems to be always a hundred things tearing one different ways, and no time for any of them."
"Yes, when one is young one feels like that," said Lady Winterbourne, sighing. "When one is old one accepts one's limitations. When I was twenty I never thought that I should still be an ignorant and discontented woman at nearly seventy."
"It is because you are so young still, Lady Winterbourne, that you feel so," said Aldous, laughing at her, as one does at an old friend. "Why, you are younger than any of us! I feel all brushed and stirred up—a boy at school again—after I have been to see you!"