have opened, wet from Puck's magic simples. Darcy was a new man,—look, intonation, manner; different, and for her! It was startling that he could be positively beautiful as the vehicle, the expression, of love. "Don't you see, Gertrude? the same thing has been the matter with us both. We've been looking for each other. We've been shut in adjoining cells, and have just found out that we each had a neighbor, and could communicate, and help each other, and get free together!"
"But—Frances . . ."
"Frances? Who? Did I ever know a Frances? You're the only girl I ever met. Don't you understand? I've been wasting incense before the image instead of the real presence; admiring externals because they stood for certain inner beauties, for a spirit I assumed back of them : when it is you, you, I have been worshipping all along in other women. That's my first sonnet to you, dear,—the most beautiful woman in the world!"
"Why, Ned!" Tenderness, faintly touched with amusement, warm with sympathy, almost maternal. "Why, Ned!" And gratitude, all the sweeter and more thrilling for surprise. "Do you really care like that, dear?"
"Care? You're just the girl for me. What work I shall do with you to help me, when simply being with you an hour now does me so much good! My whole life will be like this afternoon—a volume of verse dedicated to you."
And that—his need—was to her a higher argument than his wish or hers. It tempted the craving to be of value, stirred the pity of a great-heartedness, flattered the delusion of unselfishness.
"So it wasn't dead, after all,—the carnivorous day-dream?"
"Oh yes, it was. Quite. I had written the epitaph, you remember. But maybe ghosts do walk sometimes. No, no, I didn't mean that."
He failed to see why she should not.
Outside the door Gertrude paused to quiet the flutter of anticipation and shyness. As Ned's aunt, both by blood and marriage, and the nearest of kin, Mrs. Harold Darcy represented the family.
Mrs. Darcy did not rise; she was a very large woman. But she kept the girl's hand, looking her over with slow neutral regard. "So this is Gertrude? Well, I must say I'm surprised. I never before knew Ed to be interested in any woman not a beauty. When I asked him if you were, he came down from the clouds long enough to say fretfully that he was sure he found you good to look at." Gertrude freed her hand and sat down with mixed feelings. "But I'm glad to see such a practical-looking girl—you may be sensible. I was slow about coming, child: Ed has had so many enthusiasms that came to nothing; one-sided most of them. But it seems you really expect to get married?" The placid voice paused, slightly interrogatory.
Gertrude's eyes were very bright, her cheeks very red, and her lips straight. "And—why—not?"
"He deserves no such luck." Whatever compliment was in the words, the delivery flattened. "Somebody must consider you, child. It's only fair to warn you."
"Of what? Do you mean . . ."
"Oh, I don't mean that he's not straight. He's never been very strong, nor had much money, nor been considered generally charming,"—she smiled at that. "Besides, he's finical in his tastes." Her gaze travelled over the girl again in impersonal wonderment. "He'd not be liable to vulgar vices."
"You sound as if that were a vice."
"Is it much to his credit? That's the point. It's not so much what Ed does as what he doesn't do. He's as negative as a mirror—simply reflects the last thing before it, and that only while it lasts." Her eyes had never ceased considering Gertrude. "How on earth did you and he come to this?" Gertrude sat, too bewildered for anger. "You think he loves you, doubtless?"
"A girl can only suppose so when a man asks her to marry him."
"Well, he doesn't. He loves no one but himself."
"Oh, that! And this is what you came to tell me?"
"Yes,—that you won't like him, you won't be able to live with him."
"And you're his mother's own sister!"
"Yes, indeed, and married to his father's brother, so I ought to know, oughtn't I? Ed's been in my charge ever since his mother gave up the
