But Mrs. Aldwinkle was implacable in her tactlessness. “I never heard anything that sounded so love-sick,” she said, smiling archly into the looking-glass. Mrs. Aldwinkle’s humorous sallies had a way of falling ponderously, like bludgeon strokes, on the objects of her raillery. One never knew, when she was being sprightly, whether to feel sorrier for the victim or for Mrs. Aldwinkle herself. For though the victim might get hard knocks, the spectacle of Mrs. Aldwinkle laboriously exerting herself to deliver them was sadly ludicrous; one wished, for her sake, for the sake of the whole human race, that she would desist. But she never did. Mrs. Aldwinkle always carried all her jokes to the foreseen end, and generally far further than was foreseeable by any one less ponderously minded than herself. “It was like a whale sighing!” she went on with a frightful playfulness. “It must be a grand passion of the largest size. Who is it? Who is it?” She raised her eyebrows, she smiled with what seemed to her, as she studied it in the glass, a most wickedly sly but charming smile—like a smile in a comedy by Congreve, it occurred to her. “But, Aunt Lilian,” protested Irene, almost in despair, almost in tears, “it was nothing, I tell you.” At moments like this she could almost find it in her to hate Aunt Lilian. “As a matter of fact, I was only....” She was going to blurt it out courageously; she was just going to tell Aunt Lilian—at the risk of a teasing or an almost equally unwelcome solicitude: either were better than this—that she had been merely yawning. But Mrs. Aldwinkle, still relentlessly pursuing her fun, interrupted her. “But I guess who it is,” she said, wagging a forefinger at the glass. “I guess. I’m not such a blind stupid old auntie as you think. You imagine I haven’t noticed. Silly child! Did she think I didn’t see that he was very assiduous and that she rather liked it? Did she think her stupid old auntie was blind?” Irene blushed again; the tears came into her eyes. “But who are you talking about?” she said in a voice that she had to make a great effort to keep from breaking and trembling out of control. “What an innocent!” mocked Mrs. Aldwinkle, still very Congreve. And at this point—earlier than was usual with her on these occasions—she had mercy and consented to put poor Irene out of her agony. “Why, Hovenden,” she said. “Who else should it be?” “Hovenden?” Irene repeated with genuine surprise. “Injured innocence!” Mrs. Aldwinkle momentarily renewed her trampling fun. “But it’s sufficiently obvious,” she went on in a more natural voice. “The poor boy follows you like a dog.” “Me?” Irene had been too much preoccupied in following her Aunt Lilian to notice that she in her turn was being followed. “Now don’t pretend,” said Mrs. Aldwinkle. “It’s so stupid pretending. Much better to be frank and straightforward. Admit, now, that you like him.”