He drank his tea in sips, listening to her, his head bent. The firelight leaped and cast changing lights upon his countenance. Baby thought he looked thinner, older, sterner; yet she could never be afraid of him. There was something extraordinarily pleasant in having him there. The very loneliness of the Old Ancient House added a zest. The unsubstantial image of Harry English faded like a ghost before the dawn in the strong man’s presence. She edged her chair an inch closer. "I am sorry Lady Gerardine is no better," said he, formally, into the silence. "Oh, better!" answered Aspasia. "Will you have another cup?" ("That makes the third." She was pleased; here was a tribute to her capacity.) "Better?—that’s what is so funny, she’s as well as possible. She looks young, young, with a bloom on her cheeks, and sometimes she walks about smiling to herself. It makes me creep. I can’t think what she’s smiling at. She comes down, singing softly to herself. Why, there are times when she looks just like a girl. No one could ever believe she’s had two husbands," cried terrible Baby. Major Bethune put down his cup, untouched. ("He didn’t want it after all," commented she.) "It is rather strange," she went on aloud; "she’s simply bloomed since she came here, and the whole house is full of Harry English. And she’s shut up half the time, in his old rooms under the roof, routing among those old letters, you know—those letters there was all the fuss about. I thought we’d killed her over them between us," said Baby, with her little nervous laugh. "And now, I don’t know, but I almost think I would rather see her cry and look pale as before. It would seem more natural. Really, I’m frightened sometimes." Her pretty face, with its wide open eyes, took a piteous look in the firelight. "You don’t think it means anything?" she resumed. And the tears suddenly welled, the corners of her mouth drooped: she seemed no more than a child. He stretched out his arm and took her hand. "Mean?" he said. "Why, Miss Aspasia, what should it mean? Something perhaps that your kind heart would find hard to understand. But it means, after all, nothing so very unusual. Lady Gerardine, and it is all the better for her, is of those who are quickly consoled. The country air is doing her good, and the old letters——" he dropped her hand, his tones grew incisive. "It is only when the past is more satisfactory than the present that memories are disagreeable." "Oh," cried Aspasia. She started to her feet. "What a funny way you have of saying that!" And as the meaning of his words forced itself upon her, "How unkind! I think you hate Aunt Rosamond." "I?" said he, startled. He rose in his turn. "What an absurd idea!" He laughed, but his lips seemed stiff. "I?—I would not presume, how could I? to have any feeling for Lady Gerardine but that of distant respect." The door opened and in came Rosamond.