But let me go on with that curiously broken evening.
Ever since Pepper had told us about his knighthood Aunt Angela had sat, her slender fingers folded in her lap, smiling from time to time into the fire. Now knighthood is a temporal distinction, and, as such (I am putting this bluntly), another nut for that new and dainty humility of hers to crack. For worldliness, it was my own promised wealth in another form; and against such things she seemed to have taken up some sort of a position. I think the less practicable human charities had given her a tenderness even for Miss Levey, for I had not escaped a soft look of reproach when I had made my observations on that lady; and altogether she appeared to be wrapped in a little private veil of dissociation from the rest of us and our doings.
So—again to anticipate what became plain a little later—she also was nursing her little surprise for us. Several times during the last month or two she had spoken vaguely of leaving her rooms in Woburn Place, the rooms she had shared with Evie before our marriage; but I had not taken her very seriously; she was welcome to come to us (as she afterwards did) whenever she chose, and she knew it. But she had got it into her head that she would like to take a single room—oh, quite a large, airy, cheerful one—and, as it turned out presently, she had actually done so that very day.
Some chance remark of Pepper's—I think it was something about how pleasant it was to see us thus in our little family circle—gave her the opportunity for her announcement. There had been a little byplay between Pepper and Evie, who had wanted to know why in that case he didn't get married himself; and to that Pepper, abolishing (as it were) the candlesticks under his nose by an act equal in potency to that of creation itself, had answered gallantly (and, in the presence of those candlesticks, rather naughtily) that our own ménage set him a standard which he would rather cherish in thought than fall from in miserable actuality. It was then that his look embraced Aunt Angela, and my maiden aunt by marriage smiled.
"I suppose Mr Pepper thinks I live here because he always finds me here," she said. "But that's only because I've no conscience about inflicting myself on other people. My dwelling's a much more modest one than this, Mr Pepper."
I think Pepper was insincere enough to reply that that it might quite well be and yet almost everything that could be desired.
"I forgot to tell you that, Jeff," Aunt Angela continued, turning to me. "As a matter of fact I only settled the matter to-day—so you're not the only one for whom to-day's been quite important, Mr Pepper." She preened herself.
"Oh!" I said shortly. I thought the whole idea rather stupid. But she continued: