"Young?" echoed the Governor’s wife, wearily. Baby was counting on her fingers: "I was, let me see, just twelve when you married the Runkle, six years ago. So," triumphantly, "you are twenty-seven now. And that is, oh, quite ridiculously young for an aunt!" Lady Gerardine sighed. "Dear Aunt Rosamond," said Aspasia, suddenly, turning round to kneel and place her elbows on her aunt’s knees while she looked earnestly into her face, "why won’t you?" "Why won’t I what, Baby?" "You know. Let that poor man have those papers. Dear Aunt Rosamond, I don’t think it’s quite fair." The girl was trembling at her own temerity. But now the elder woman showed neither anger nor distress; only a marble stillness seemed to come over the living flesh. After a pause she placed her hand gently across Aspasia’s mouth. "Baby, never speak of that again," she said. And there was the most absolute finality in her voice. Then she leaned forward and kissed her niece. The touch of her lips struck Aspasia as deathly cold. "Now play me something." Aspasia rose, baffled, not without a feeling akin to the irritation that Major Bethune had displayed a little while before. It was like being brought up by a smooth blank wall. She marched to the piano, opened it, and plunged into a prelude of Bach’s, glad to be able to work off some of her pent-up feelings. As she played she set her pointed chin; and, while her fingers flew, her thought wove in and out with the intricate music to a settled resolution: "I don’t care. Other people can be determined too. It is not fair of Aunt Rosamond. And I’ll not give it up." She finished her "Bach" with a triumphant chord. "Thank you," said Lady Gerardine, "I like your music, Baby. It is so intellectual." *CHAPTER III* Sir Arthur Gerardine was stretched in a bamboo chair on the white terrace overlooking the garden, taking his ease luxuriously. He had had his shampoo after his ride, he had had tea, and had started his second cheroot. It was growing delightfully cool. He had the conviction of leaving a well-spent day behind him; and now, an immaculately conscienced, immaculately attired English gentleman of importance, felt himself entitled to his virtuous relaxation. He was perilously near the sixties, but young-looking for his age in spite of his oriental experience; handsome still, with a smile that, upon first acquaintance, was found irresistibly fascinating; a genial easy manner—a way with him, in fact, that seemed to promise the utmost good-fellowship. It was only after experience that people felt the steel behind the velvet glove. "Uncle Arthur," Aspasia one day averred in an irrepressible burst of frankness, "is the sort of man the more you know him, the less you like him."