"She'd have been a very abnormal lady if she'd never fallen in love at all, Mary." "Yes; but then she used to think people were in love with her when they weren't." "How old is Aunt Charlotte?" "She must be ages over fifty now." "Well, my dear, you're just twenty-eight, and I don't think you've been in love yet." "That's it. I have." "No. You've only thought you were. Once? Twice, perhaps? You may have been very near it--for ten minutes. But a man might be in love with you for ten years, and you wouldn't be a bit the wiser, if he held his tongue about it.... No. People don't go off their heads because their aunts do, or we should all of us be mad. There's hardly a family that hasn't got somebody with a tile loose." "Then you don't think there's anything in it?" "I don't think there's anything in it in your case. Anything at all." "I'm glad I told you." She thought: "It isn't so bad. Whatever happens he'll be here." XIII. The sewing-party had broken up. She could see them going before her on the road, by the garden wall, by the row of nine ash-trees in the field, round the curve and over Morfe Bridge. Bobbing shoulders, craning necks, stiff, nodding heads in funny hats, turning to each other. When she got home she found Mrs. Waugh, and Miss Frewin in the drawing-room with Mamma. They had brought her the news. The Sutcliffes were going. They were trying to let Greffington Hall. The agent, Mr. Oldshaw, had told Mr. Horn. Mr. Frank, the Major, would be back from India in April. He was going to be married. He would live in the London house and Mr. and Mrs. Sutcliffe would live abroad. Mamma said, "If their son's coming back they've chosen a queer time to go away." XIV. It couldn't be true. You knew it when you dined with them, when you saw the tranquil Regency faces looking at you from above the long row of Sheraton chairs, the pretty Gainsborough lady smiling from her place above the sideboard. As you sat drinking coffee out of the dark blue coffee cups with gold linings you knew it couldn't be true. You were reassured by the pattern of the chintzes--pink roses and green leaves on a pearl-grey ground--by the crystal chains and pendants of the chandelier, by the round black mirror sunk deep in the bowl of its gilt frame. They couldn't go; for if they went, the quiet, gentle life of these things would be gone. The room had no soul apart from the two utterly beloved figures that sat there, each in its own chintz-covered chair. "It isn't true," she said, "that you're going?" She was sitting on the polar bear hearthrug at Mrs. Sutcliffe's feet. "Yes, Mary." The delicate, wrinkled hand came out from under the cashmere shawl to stroke her arm. It kept on stroking, a long, loving, slow caress. It made her queerly aware of her arm--white and slender under the big puff of the sleeve--lying across Mrs. Sutcliffe's lap. "He'll be happier in his garden at Agaye."