"In the dark!" she said, looking upon them unseeingly after the light of the hall. "Is that Major Bethune?" She came forward, while Aspasia, on her knees, violently poked the fire into a blaze. "Rose of the World," thought Bethune, as the ruddy glow fell upon the figure of his friend’s widow. It was true she looked like a girl. Her cheek was rose-red from the cold wind. Her shadowed eyes brilliant. The light tendrils of her hair floated back from her white forehead. "You are welcome," she said, and mingled with her grace and sweetness there was a timidity which was as exquisite and as indescribable an addition to her beauty as the bloom to the purple of the grape or the mist to the line of the hills at dawn. He bowed over her hand. He felt angry with himself that he had no word to say. "Tea?" said Aspasia. As he took the cup from her to pass it to Lady Gerardine, he heard the spoon clink against the saucer with the trembling of his own hand. *CHAPTER VI* "It is the post, Aunt," said Aspasia; "and a letter from Runkle." She stood at the door of the attic, looking in upon them with something unfriendly in the expression of her eyes. The tone in which she announced Lady Gerardine’s correspondent was not without a shade of malicious triumph. Rosamond and Major Bethune were sitting one at each end of the old writing-table that had been Harry English’s. Between them lay a pile of papers. From the landing, Baby had heard Bethune’s voice uplifted in unwonted animation, and then the ring of her aunt’s laugh. As she entered, the man rose. But Lady Gerardine merely turned her head towards the intruder with an involuntary contraction of the eyebrows. "Dear child," she said, and Aspasia felt the impatience of interruption under the gentleness of the tone, "we are at work." "At work! It had sounded like it," thought the girl, ironically. "Runkle writes from Brindisi," she said, turning over in her hand the thin envelope with the foreign stamp. "We shall have him home directly." If she had hoped to create a sensation with her news, here was a failure. Bethune stood impassive. Lady Gerardine had all the air of one to whom Sir Arthur’s movements were the least of concerns. She turned with a little impatient gesture to Major Bethune! "Do sit down again," she said, "and go on. You have not told me whether Harry won the race. Oh, he must have won. I never saw any one ride as he did." Aspasia’s pretty, defiant countenance changed. Of late she had occasionally known an undefined lurking anxiety about her aunt—it now sprang out of ambush and seized her again. She put one hand over Rosamond’s clasped fingers, and with the other held the letter before the abstracted eyes. "But you must read it," she said, half tenderly, half authoritatively.