They were in a long cool room, one of the bygone zenana apartments preserved practically untouched, which opened upon the one side into the garden through the arches of a colonnade, and was secluded even from that quiet spot by marvellous stone lacework screens, each different down to the smallest detail of design, yet all in harmony. However the small dusky Eastern beauties may have rebelled in their day against these exquisite prison walls; the present Northern mistress of the whilom palace found pleasure in their very seclusion, their apartness; and, according to her wont, she feasted her soul lazily on their artistic perfections. She was stretched on a highly painted Indian couch which had been converted into a sofa, and let her eyes wander from the carving of the window screens themselves to their even lovelier reflections, cut in grey shadow on the white marble of the pavement. From the inner rooms the waters of the baths played murmurous accompaniment to her thought and her interrupted speech. Aspasia, squatting on the rug at the foot of the couch, listened, commented, and suggested. The latter had not yet quite overcome her horrified sense of guilt in connection with Lady Gerardine’s singular breakdown. Without being able to piece together any reasonable explanation of late events, she felt instinctively that here was more than met the eye; that there was in the web of her aunt’s life, so to speak, an under-warp of unknown colour and unexpected strength; that behind the placid surface there lay secret depths; and that her own trifling treachery had unwittingly set forces in motion with incalculable possibilities. She had gone about, these days, with a solemn look—a living presentment of childish anxiety. The scared shadow was still on her pretty face as she now sat in attendance. "Home in six weeks..." said Rosamond, dreamily. "We shall still find violets amid the dark-green leaves, Baby, and brown and yellow chrysanthemums on the top of their frost-bitten stalks." "And is it not jolly," said Aspasia, hugging her knees, "to think that we can go and paddle about in the wet as much as ever we like, without any one after us! And isn’t it delightful to be going off just our two selves. Oh! Aunt Rosamond, you gave me an awful fright, you know; but really it was rather well done of you, to faint off like that. You see, the doctor says, whatever they do, now, they’re not to contradict you. If ever I get an illness I hope it will be that sort. It is worth anything to be leaving Runkle behind." Rosamond did not answer, unless a small secret smile in her pillows could be called an answer. "I don’t suppose," proceeded Baby, emboldened, "that you have ever been free from the dear Runkle for more than three days at a time since you married him." The phrase being a mere statement of fact, it was again left without response.