She drew back before a mystery to which she vaguely felt she would never have the key. "You know, he will return to-day," stammered she at last. "It’s all right about his business. He is coming back." "I know," answered Harry English’s wife, in a low vibrating voice. Then she hesitated, and turned to look at the girl, a wistful inquiry in her shadowed eyes. "Have they told him?" she asked, under her breath, raising one of the heavy white locks that lay across her breast. "Oh," exclaimed Aspasia, springing to her meaning, "but you are beautiful with it, you are more beautiful than ever! No—I don’t know if they’ve told him. Oh, darling," she cried, melting all into tenderness, pity, and amusement, as over a child, "it wasn’t for that, it could not be for that, you wouldn’t see him?" "For that!" said Rosamond. A flame seemed to pass over her again. She quivered from head to foot, and a deep flush rose to the very roots of her blanched hair. "Oh, Baby, no. How could you guess, how could you understand—poor little bride of an hour?" And, as once before, upon that crucial morning in the distant Indian palace, she had taken all her golden hair to cover her face and hide its misery from violating eyes, Rosamond now swept the silver veil across the betrayal of her blood, that even Baby might not look upon the tumult of her heart. The scent of the dark rose, stronger even than the lilies, filled the room. * * * * * Bethune carried off his bride unobtrusively—unromantically. Rosamond was still upstairs. And that no farewells should take place between her and Major Bethune fell out so naturally that even Baby scarcely commented upon it. Rosamond had always held herself so much aloof. That this procedure should have been planned by Bethune himself because he could not trust himself in this good-bye, would have been the last thought to enter the little wife’s head; her Raymond had always rather disliked poor Aunt Rosamond than otherwise. Such was her conviction. He could never forgive her for having been his friend’s forgetful widow. She herself had shed torrents of easy tears of parting within the walls of the panelled bedroom; and had subsequently driven away beside the man of her choice (in the selfsame fly, smelling of straw, that had provoked her enthusiasm at arrival, her modest luggage atop), petulantly reviling her bridegroom for his inconsiderate hurry, the while nestling comfortably into the hollow of his shoulder.