"Hot, hot," said Aspasia, flinging her Panama hat across the room and rubbing her forehead. Her cheeks had grown pale and there were moist dark rings round her eyes. "I have had the better part, I think," said Lady Gerardine. "Not you," said Baby, as she dumped her solid weight on her favourite corner of the bed. "It’s been delightful, delicious. I’ve never enjoyed a ride so much." Her bright hazel gaze misted over in remembrance. "Oh dear," said she, "how can you lie there! You’re quite young, Aunt Rosamond, but I think your idea of happiness is like a cat’s. You just like to sit still and blink and think. And even the cats romp about—at night," she added, parenthetically. "Oh, I don’t even think, or care to think much," said the other in that indulgent half-playful manner which she reserved for her niece, to whom she talked more as if she were five years old than eighteen. "While you were out I let my soul swing on that great green leaf over there by the window. Do you see it, Baby? It is beginning to catch a ray of sunlight now and shines like a golden emerald." "Gracious!" cried the girl. "I think it is partly," said Rosamond, pursuing her own thoughts, "because of this vivid passionate land, where every one lives so intensely. No wonder, poor things, their ideal of complete happiness over here is Nirwana! I am glad, Baby, that we shall soon be in our placid England again, where people go from the cradle to the grave, quietly as along a grey road green-hedged, from a cottage gate to a sleeping churchyard." "I am glad, too, we are going to England," cried Aspasia, catching up one phrase of her aunt’s speech and neglecting the main idea. "I met Major Bethune, this morning," she said, half-bashful, half-defiant, "and he’s going home on leave, too." Lady Gerardine’s eyelids drooped, just enough to veil her glance. She lay quite still, without even a contraction of the fingers that rested upon the sheet. Baby peeped at her in a sidelong, bird-like way, and felt inexplicably uncomfortable. She babbled on, stumbling over her words: "He was riding such a brute of a horse, and sat it like a centaur—or whatever you call the thing. You never saw such an eye as the creature had; one of those raw chestnuts, you know, with a neck that goes up in the air and seems to hang loose. And he sat, just with the grip of his knees, you know. He is as thin as—as——" Simile was not Aspasia’s strong point; she broke off. "You are not listening to a word I am saying." She swung her legs pettishly, in the short linen habit. "I heard," said Rosamond, without lifting her eyes. "I heard very well." "I’ll go and take a bath," said Aspasia, sliding off the bed, and pausing for the expected protest. Aspasia’s habit of plunging into water four or five times a day was a matter of perpetual household objurgation.