But Florence felt that Jane might look curiously at the wrinkled face that still showed signs of recent agitation, so she put her hand softly on the one that Aunt Anne had stretched out to touch the bell.
“I will get it for you, dear,” she said, and in a moment she had flown upstairs and brought down the soft lace cap put ready on the bed, and the cashmere slippers edged with fur and lined with red flannel, in which Aunt Anne liked to encase her feet in the evening. “There, now, you will feel better, you poor dear,” she said when they were put on and the old lady sat silent and composed, looking as if she were contemplating her future, and the new life before her. Florence stood by her silently for a moment, thinking over the past weeks in which Aunt Anne, with her poverty and dignity, her generosity and recklessness, had formed so striking a figure. Then she thought of the lonely life the poor old lady had led in the Kilburn lodging.
After all, if she only had even a very little happiness with that horrid Mr. Wimple, it would be something; and of course, if he didn’t behave properly, Walter could take her away. The worst of it was she had understood that Mr. Wimple had no money. She had heard that he lived on a small allowance from an uncle, and the uncle might stop that allowance when he heard that his nephew had married an old woman who had not a penny.
“Aunt Anne,” she asked gently, “does he know that you are not rich?”
“Florence, I told him plainly that I had no fortune,” the old lady answered, with a pathetic half-hunted look on her face that made Florence hate herself for her lack of sympathy. But she felt that she ought to ask some questions. Walter would be so angry if she allowed her to go into misery and fresh poverty without making a single effort to save her.
“And has he money, dear—enough to keep you both, at any rate?”
The tears trickled down Aunt Anne’s face again while she answered—
“If I did not ask him that question, Florence, it is not for you to ask it me. I neither know nor care what he has. If he is willing to take me for myself only, so am I willing to take him, loving him for himself only too. I am too old to marry for money, and he is too noble to do so. We are grown-up man and woman, Florence, and know our own hearts; we will brook no interference, my darling, not even from you.” She got up tremblingly. “I must retire; you must allow me to retire, and in the privacy of my own room I shall be able to reflect.”
The long words were coming back; they were a sign that Aunt Anne was herself again.
“Yes, dear Aunt Anne; I am sure you must want to be alone, and to think,” Florence said gently.