Aunt Sophy’s placid, purring query struck her ears like a gunshot. “No,” she said shortly. Aunt Sophy’s keen blue eyes were full on her face. “He had a very serious illness?” “Yes.” “Why doesn’t he come down to Folly Corner?” “He’s busy. The train service is so bad.” “The train service is very good, now that we have the new line. He could go up every morning quite easily, with a quick horse to take him to the station. It would be better, dear. We hardly care for you to live alone with Jethro. You’re really much younger than you look. Strangers might consider the arrangement a fitting one, but we in the family, who know that you are really not thirty, consider it hardly proper. People talk. You know,” she laughed indulgently, “what a long tongue Maria has--and she visits at so many nice houses. You and Jethro ought to marry. Why doesn’t the wedding come off? Everyone is wondering. It is fifteen months since you came back from nursing Edred.” “We have changed our minds. We neither of us wish to marry. It doesn’t matter what people say.” “My dear, your family has every confidence. But I’m sure my idea is excellent. Let Edred come and live at Folly Corner. If you had your brother with you no one could say a word. Isn’t this a pretty workbag?” She held up a limp blue thing, worked with straggling leaves in brown silk. She held it so persistently, swinging it tantalizingly by the string, that Pamela was compelled to meet her inquisitive eyes--eyes that she had always known suspected her. There was more than a spark of malice in Aunt Sophy. She had been young once, a coquette, so they said. The embers of coquetry lay in her eyes still. She had never been a mere pink and silly girl like her daughter Nancy. “If you had your brother with you,” she repeated with emphasis, “no one could say a word. Why doesn’t he come? Is it because of Nancy? He was in love with Nancy. But she is married now.” “He cannot come. He has his business.” “Well, then, my dear,”--she never shifted her questioning eyes,--“I must say that you ought to marry to Jethro.” Pamela walked home thoughtfully. There was, then, nothing stationary in life--outside a happy marriage. The family had combined to drive her from Folly Corner or into Jethro’s arms. The family did not know the cold, sad repugnance that they both had for love-making--the dread avoidance of it, as a poignant, heart-wrenching thing. Aunt Sophy might suspect, but she would never be sure.