"Of course," said Aunt Emmeline, "you are _not_ in your first bloom. _That_ we can't expect. Your colour is a little harder and more fixed" (the figure in the glass gave a spasmodic jerk. The sulky expression was pierced by a gleam of fear. "_Fixed_!" Good gracious! She might be talking of those old people who have little red lines over their cheek-bones in the place of "bloom". It's _ridiculous_ to say I am "fixed". It is a matter of indifference to me how I look, but I do insist on truth!) "and your air of pride and independence is unbecoming in an unmarried girl. Men like to see a girl sweet, clinging, pliant." "What men?" "_All_ men!" "Oh! And in my case, for instance, to whom would you suggest I should proceed to cling?" "That," said Aunt Emmeline briskly, "is precisely what I wish to discuss." She lifted the last morsel of scone from the plate, stared at it, and popped it into her mouth. "My dear, has it ever occurred to you to think what you are going to _do_?" "Aunt Emmeline, for the last months it has rarely occurred to me to think of anything else!" "Very well then, that's all to the good. As I said to Aunt Eliza, let us leave her alone till Kathleen has gone. Evelyn is obstinate, and if you interfere she will only grow more pig-headed. Let her find things out for herself. Experience, Eliza, will do more than either you or I. Sooner or later, even Evelyn must realise that you can't run a house, and garden, and stable, in the same way on half the ordinary income. Now that Kathleen is married, she naturally takes with her her own fortune." She looked at me expectantly, and I smiled, another stiff, marionette smile--and said:-- "How true! Curiously enough, that fact has already penetrated to my dull brain!"