Later in the afternoon Aunt Selina arrived. There was always something magnificent and aloof about Aunt Selina; she had the air of having been transplanted out of a glorious past into a frivolous and inferior present, and being far too well-bred to comment on its inferiority, however keenly she was aware of it. She was the half-sister of Hilary Wimbourne, and much older than he, being the child of a first marriage of his father. Harry and James were on the front steps to greet her as she drove up in state. Her very manner of stepping out of the carriage and ascending the steps where she gravely bent and kissed each of her nephews with the same greeting—"How do you do, my dear James," "How do you do, my dear Harry,"—was not so much a tribute to the gravity of this particular occasion as a typical instance of Aunt Selina's way of doing things. Though only of average height, she generally gave the impression of being tall by the erect way in which she habitually carried her head, and by the straightness and spareness of her whole figure. Her skirts always nobly swept the floor beside and behind her, in a day when other women's skirts hung limply about their ankles. Both Harry and James looked upon her with an awe which was only slightly modified by affection.
But both boys' views of Aunt Selina underwent expansion within the next twenty-four hours, and they were to learn the interesting lesson that a warm and impulsive heart may be hidden within a forbidding exterior. Aunt Selina entered the home of the Wimbournes with her customary quiet ceremony, and gravely greeted such of her relatives as were present, after which every one else in the room instinctively "stood around," waiting for her to make the first move. Kind and gentle Aunt Cecilia, who was a daughter of one of New York's oldest and proudest and richest families, was no one in particular while Aunt Selina was in the room. Miss Wimbourne immediately proceeded to her bedroom, to repair the ravages of travel, and when she came down again she found the drawing-room deserted except for James, who was standing in front of a window and gazing out into the twilight. She went over and stood by him, also looking over the darkening lawn.
"I am very glad to get this chance to see you, James," she said presently, in her subdued, measured tones, "even though the occasion for my being here is such a sad one. It is not often I get a chance to see any of my nephews and nieces."
James mumbled an inarticulate monosyllable or two in reply, without turning his head. Aunt Selina had interrupted what was a bad half-hour for James. She turned and looked at him, and the look of dumb suffering on his face struck into the very roots of her heart. She stooped suddenly and put her arms about him, kissing his cheek with a warmth that was entirely new to James.
"I know how it feels," she whispered; "I've been through it all, not once, but again and again, and I know just how bad it is. Dear boy, how I wish I could bear it for you."
She sat down on a little settee that stood in front of the window, still holding one of James' hands in hers, and the boy, after the first shock of astonishment had passed, sank down on his knees in front of her and buried his head in her lap. So he remained for some minutes, sobbing almost contentedly; it was sweet to find consolation in this unexpected quarter.
Presently he raised his miserable eyes to hers. "It's Harry, too—partly—" he said, and could go no further.
"Yes, I know that too," said his aunt. "You mean that you have to bear up on Harry's account—"
"Yes!"
"Because you are older and stronger than he, and you know he would suffer more if you let him see how much you suffer. So you go about with the pain burning your very heart out, because all the time something in his face makes it impossible for you to breathe a word more of it than you can help. And so every one gets the idea you are more hard-hearted than he," she went on passionately, letting her voice sink to a whisper, "and are not capable of as much feeling as he. But you don't care what people think; you don't know or care about anything except oh! if you only might go somewhere and shriek it all out to somebody, anybody! And after a lifetime of that sort of thing self-repression becomes second nature to you, so that you can't say a thing you think or feel, and you become the sort of living mummy that I am, with your soul dead and embalmed years ago, while your body, your worthless, useless body, goes on living and living. You have begun it early, my poor James!"