"Don’t be a goose, Jani!" cried she, briskly. "If you can see Aunt Rosamond, why should not I?" She ducked nimbly under the white-draped forbidding arm, as she spoke. "And she is not a bit asleep; her eyes are as wide awake as anything." Too strainedly awake, one more versed in the reading of the human countenance might well have deemed. But the last thing Aspasia sought in life was its subtlety. Rosy and fresh from her bath, her crisp hair crinkled into tighter curls than ever and still beaded here and there with the spray of her energetic ablutions, as she stood in the square of green light, wrapping her pink cambric dressing-gown tightly round her pretty figure, she was as pleasant to look upon as an English daisy. Lady Gerardine smiled more brightly. "It’s a glorious morning, Aunt Rosamond. Are not you going to ride?" "Not this morning." "Aren’t you well?" Aspasia sat down on the side of the bed and took her aunt’s hands into her firm grasp. There was a conscience-stricken anxiety in the girl’s eyes. "Quite well; but I slept badly." Baby felt the beat of a slow pulse under her fingers. Relieved but still weighted with a sense of guilt, she bent to kiss the face on the pillow. Lady Gerardine turned her cheek with that tolerant submission to caress that she was wont to display. Then she drew her hands away and gently pushed Aspasia from her. "Go and dress, you will be late. And tell your uncle that I am trying to sleep." Still Aspasia hesitated. She would have liked to confess her last night’s treachery and be forgiven. But Lady Gerardine, who was never a very approachable person, seemed this morning more distant than ever. And catching sight of the dancing leaves outside, the girl felt the joy of the young day suddenly seize her spirit. She shuffled gaily across the room in her heel-less slippers. "I’ll tell Runkle you’re sound asleep and he must not disturb you," she announced with cheerful mendacity, "otherwise you’ll have him prowling in and thrusting that thermometer down your throat." Lady Gerardine laughed a little, but made no protest.—That thermometer! Then she turned her head and fell to watching the garden window again, glad when across the open spaces she heard at last the crisp repeated rhythm of the horses’ feet draw close and ring sharp, as the cavalcade moved up the road by the garden walls, and drop away in the distance. * * * * * When Aspasia returned from her ride she found her aunt seemingly in the same attitude; the long white hands folded, she could have sworn, exactly as she had last seen them; the deep-dreaming eyes still gazing out of the window. "I declare," cried the girl, "you lazy thing!" but there was still a shade of uneasiness in her voice and in her glance. "Are not you ashamed of yourself?" "Not at all," said Rosamond, "I’ve had a very happy time. And you?"