“You must be ill,” he said. “I can’t believe it is you I am speaking to. You ought to see the doctor, Aunt Susan—you cannot be well.”
“Perhaps,” she said with a pitiful attempt at a smile, “perhaps. Indeed you must be right, Everard, for I don’t feel like myself. I am getting old, you know.”
“Nonsense!” he said lightly, “you were as young as any of us last time I was here.”
“Ah!” said Miss Susan, with her quivering lips. “I have kept that up too long. I have gone on being young—and now all at once I am old; that is how it is.”
“But that does not make any difference in my argument,” said Everard; “if you are old—which I don’t believe—the less reason is there for having you vexed. You don’t like this guest who is going to inflict herself upon you. I shouldn’t mind her,” he added, with a laugh; “she’s very handsome, Aunt Susan; but I don’t suppose that affects you in the same way; and she will be quite out of place when Herbert comes, or at least when Reine comes. I advise you to tell her plainly, before the old fellow goes, that it won’t do.”
“I can’t, my dear—I can’t!” said Miss Susan; how her lips quivered!—“she is in my house, she is my guest, and I can’t say ‘Go away.’ ”
“Why not? She is not a person of very fine feelings, to be hurt by it. She is not even a lady; and till May, till the end of May! you will never be able to endure her.”
“Oh, yes I shall,” said Miss Susan. “I see you think that I am very weak; but I never was uncivil to any one, Everard, not to any one in my own house. It is Herbert’s house, of course,” she added quickly, “but yet it has been mine, though I never had any real right to it for so many years.”
“And you really mean to leave now?”
“I suppose so,” said Miss Susan faltering, “I think, probably—nothing is settled. Don’t be too hard upon me, Everard! I said so—for them, to show them that I had no power.”