“No, dear Aunt Anne,” she said, “you are not an ogress; you are a sweet old dear, and I love you. Don’t cry—don’t cry, you dear.”
“My love, you are cruel to me,” Aunt Anne sobbed.
“Oh no, I am not, and you shall marry any one you like. It was a little surprising, you know, and of course I didn’t—I didn’t think that marrying was in your thoughts,” she added feebly, for she didn’t know what to say.
“Bless you, my darling, bless you,” the old lady gasped, grateful for even that straw of comfort; “I knew you would be staunch to me when you had recovered from the surprise of my communication, but——” and she gently disengaged herself from Florence’s embrace and spoke in the nervous quivering voice that always came to her in moments of excitement—“but, Florence, since the first moment we met, Alfred Wimple and I have felt that we were ordained for each other.”
“Yes, dear,” Florence said soothingly.
“He says he shall never forget the moments we sat together on your balcony that night when your dear Walter fetched the white shawl—of yours, Florence—to put round my shoulders,” the old lady went on earnestly. “And the sympathy between us is so great that we do not feel the difference of years; besides, he says he has never liked very young women, he has always felt that the power to love accumulated with time, as my power to love has done. Few of the women who have been loved by great men have been very young, my darling.”
“I didn’t know,” Florence began, for Aunt Anne had paused, almost as if she were repeating something she had learned by heart.
“He asked me to-night,” she went on with another little gasp, “if I remembered—if I remembered—I forget——but all the great passions of history have been concentrated on women in their prime. Petrarch’s Laura had eight children when the poet fell in love with her, and Helen of Troy was sixty when—when—I forget,” she said again, shaking her head; “but he remembers; he went through them all to-night. Besides, I may be old in years, but I am not old at heart; you cannot say that I am, Florence.”
She was getting excited again. Almost without her knowledge Florence led her to the easy-chair, and gently pushing her on to it, undid the strings and tried to take off her bonnet; but the old lady resisted.
“No, my dear, don’t take off my bonnet,” she said, “unless you will permit me to ring,” she added, getting back to her old-fashioned ways, “and request Jane to bring me my cap from upstairs.”