“And now, dear aunt,” she resumed, “you will perhaps understand better than ever before what a strange, inconsistent creature I am, brimful of contradictions which sway me this way and that and make me a puzzle to myself. Well, I have had my—my love experience, if I may call it so.” An involuntary sigh fluttered from her lips. “And, dear aunts—both of you,” she went on after an almost imperceptible pause, “I pray you to believe me when I say that it has left no wound behind it which time will not quickly heal. From to-day I shall be once more your own Ethel and no one shall ever come between us again.”
It was one of those sweet, high-flown promises which young people make with every intention of keeping them, but which, five times out six, after-events laugh to scorn.
Ethel rose without a word more, and having pressed a tender kiss on Miss Matilda’s faded cheek, would have gone, but the spinster detained her.
“My dear child,” she said, “my sister and I cannot but feel gratified at your having chosen to open your heart to us in the way you have; but, indeed, it was not likely that the Ethel we have known and loved from childhood should be otherwise than open and straightforward as the day. As long as you live you will have cause to feel thankful that you have escaped becoming the wife of Mr. Launce Keymer, whose name from this hour shall be banished from our lips. And now, dear one, run away and keep your flowers company for half-an-hour before tea is brought in. The day has been a most trying one for you and the fresh air will do you good.”
Before leaving the room Ethel crossed to Miss Jane and kissed her as she had her sister. “Heaven bless you, sweet one!” said the spinster fervently. Then, in a low voice, she added: “When I was as young as you are now I loved some one who deserted me for another. At the time I thought my heart would have broken—but it did not.”
Ethel quitted the room like one walking in her sleep.
Aunt Jane, a love-lorn maiden of eighteen! It was a picture which so took her imagination that for the time she forgot all about herself and her own affairs. No thought that perhaps in years gone by, before she, Ethel, was born, Cupid might have winged one of his shafts at the heart of either of her aunts had ever entered her mind, or that they might have loved, and rejoiced, and suffered in the way so many of their sex are fated to do. To her, her aunts had always been the same sweet, faded, but wholly lovable middle-aged ladies they were to-day. Of late years the silver threads among their hair, and the fine lines marked by Time’s etching needle on their placid expanse of brow and around the corners of their eyes might have become a little more observable; but that was all. And to think that behind Aunt Jane’s calm exterior, and a soft serenity of manner which was like that of some gracious autumnal day, lay hidden the embers—long since extinct, it was true—of one of those too common love episodes (tragedies they might in many instances be termed) which culminate on one side in vows foresworn, and on the other in a heartache so extreme that till the soft hand of time brings some relief, death itself seems the only possible cure! Aunt Jane had gone through all this. How strange and wonderful it seemed!
On her way upstairs she had paused at the landing window, scarcely knowing that she did so, so deep in thought was she, and there Tamsin, coming out of one of the upper rooms, presently found her.
“Youth and daydreams go together,” said the old woman. “Age has no daydreams, and all its pictures belong to the long ago.”
Ethel, who had heard no footsteps, started at the sound of her voice.