“Dear, it was delicious,” she said, “lying awake and thinking about you. I am afraid I actually enjoyed it. Not that I am not very, very sorry for you and your father and Lord Yorkshire; but when I said it was delicious, I meant it was so real, so alive, so very interesting. I don’t think I have lain awake more than a few minutes in the last couple of years, and that was when your uncle had the influenza. And then it was only his cough that kept me awake; I was not anxious, for he had it very slightly. Now, if you do not mind talking about it, do tell me more. You told me just the facts. Tell me what you feel. How does it touch,--I am so stupid at saying things,--not what you will _do_ only, your actions, but yourself?” The question implied a perception with which Helen had not credited her aunt. “Ah, what a difference there is between them!” she said, quickly. “One’s actions may so frightfully belie one. What one does is so often a parody of one’s best. One’s worst part acts, while one’s best does nothing, turns its face to the wall, like Hezekiah. Or, or”--she was still kindly trying to explain to this dear little Dresden shepherdess--“one’s actions are often like an unsympathetic repetition of something one has really said, which gives quite a different meaning to it. Do you understand?” she asked, eagerly. “Yes, dear, quite,” said Lady Susan. “Surely everybody understands that. All the same it is our business if we are kind and good at all not to be harsh or hard in what we do.” Suddenly Helen’s eyes were opened. In a flash she saw that she had been doing what she deprecated, and hitherto had judged Aunt Susan merely by her actions. With the impatience that was so very characteristic of her, she had observed her ordering dinner, taking the walk, playing picquet, and otherwise having a great deal of rather fragrant leisure with which she did nothing. From this she had drawn the conclusion that there was, so to speak, no one really there, only a punctual little domestic automaton. She had been so taken up with the fact that others did not understand her, did not allow for her individuality, that she had as yet never taken the trouble to consider whether these others also had not their own individuality equally to be respected. Aunt Susan, she would have said offhand, had none, yet she was referring to as a mere commonplace what was still to Helen a blinding discovery. And she went on talking with a freedom and a certainty of being understood that she associated only with the beloved twin.