This was agreeable news. The idea of Aunt Sophy learning of my duplicity had been painful, when I had supposed she was dying; the image of her in good health and looking ten years younger as she listened to my shortcomings was intolerable. Besides, in weakening on her determination to confess, Marion had departed from the line of strict moral rectitude that she was continually tracing for my uncertain footsteps. This thought I carefully buried, like a dog with a precious bone, to be unearthed when next I was hauled over the coals for not doing the thing I ought to have done. "Well," I proceeded, "what's up--what did she want you for?" A slightly apprehensive look vanished; a most becoming flush spread over her face. For a moment I imagined, if such a thing were possible, that she radiated with pride and vain-glory. "She wanted--to ask--my advice," she replied, with innocent diffidence. "Your advice!" I shouted, with a burst of laughter. "Christopher Colum--Oh!--I--I beg your pardon, Marion, I didn't mean----" I was too late. I am a blundering idiot at times, and my wife thought, naturally, that I was scoffing at the idea of her being qualified to give advice, when, as a matter of fact, I considered her an adept in that accomplishment. I had the painful task of explaining in detail why I had laughed, and the humiliation of admitting that, after all, it wasn't a bit odd for an old lady to crave advice from her niece. "Anyway," Marion contended, with recurring indignation, "she isn't really old--she's only fifty-three." "Is that all?" I inquired, with excessive surprise. "Why, she's--she's just in her prime!" "Just what I told her!" exclaimed Marion, with approving enthusiasm. "I said she had half a lifetime before her yet." "Certainly, she has," I agreed. "And what did she want your advice about?" A look of ineffable sweetness, of tender, grand-maternal pride illumined Marion's countenance. I had never seen its like before, but somehow I recognized a spiritual inner consciousness made visible; an intangible something that a man of less refined and delicate perceptions would have missed. I didn't know what it meant. I do now. "Dear Aunt Sophy," she murmured dreamily, her eyes brimming, her gaze directed through and far beyond me, in a way that made me feel transparent; "she was so happy when I settled it!"