The band was playing a waltz, though to this day they do not know it. All manner of people were passing to and fro, but they did not notice them.
“I should like to stay here for ever,” Mrs. Hibbert said, with a sweet sigh of content. “Do you know, Walter,” she went on suddenly after a pause, “it will be four months to-morrow since we were married? Time seems to have flown.”
“By Jove! it really is a miracle what those four months have done with themselves,” he answered, looking up for a moment; as if to be sure that Time was not a conjurer standing before him about to hand the four months from beneath a handkerchief, with a polite bow and the remark that they would have to be lived through at the ordinary rate.
A spare-looking old lady, dressed in black, passed by, but he did not notice her.
“You see,” he went on, with his eyes fixed on a sailing boat in the distance, “if things were always going to be——”
At the sound of his voice the lady in black, who was only a few yards off, stopped, listened, hesitated, and, turning back, stood before him. He recognized her in a moment.
“Aunt Anne!” he exclaimed. His voice was amiable, but embarrassed, as if he did not quite know what to do next.
“My dear Walter,” she said, with a sigh and in a tone of great relief, “I am so glad to find you; I went to your lodgings, I saw your name and address in the visitors’ list yesterday, but you were out; then I thought I might find you here. And this is your wife? My dear Florence, I am so glad to see you.”
Till that moment Mrs. Walter Hibbert had never heard of the existence of Aunt Anne, but Aunt Anne had evidently heard of Mrs. Hibbert. She knew her Christian name, and called her by it as naturally as if she had been at her christening. She stretched out a small hand covered with a black thread glove as she spoke, and held Florence’s fingers affectionately in hers. Florence looked at her a little wonderingly. Aunt Anne was slight and old, nearly sixty perhaps. All over her face there were little lines that crossed and re-crossed, and branched off in every direction. She had grey hair, and small dark eyes that blinked quickly and nervously; there appeared to be some trifling affection of the left eye, for now and then, as if by accident, it winked at you. The odd thing was that, in spite of her evident tendency to nervous excitement, her shabby black satin dress, almost threadbare shawl, and cheap gloves, there was an air of dignity about the spare old lady, and something like determination in her kindly voice that, joined to her impulsive tenderness, made you quickly understand she would be a very difficult person to oppose.
“Dear boy,” she said gently to Walter, “why didn’t you write to me when you were married? You know how glad I should have been to hear of your happiness.”