Part 19 (2/2)

'You mean his young wife's health failing as soon as he brought her to that house which he was building for her, and then his taking her to Italy, and never enduring to come back here again after she and her child died. But he made a good thing of it with his quarries in the mountains.'

'You sordid person, do you think that was all he cared for!'

'Well, I always thought of him as a great, stout, monied man, quite incapable of romance and sensitiveness.'

'If so, don't you think he would have let that house instead of keeping it up in empty state! There is a good deal of character in those Whites.'

'The Captain is certainly the most marked man, except Jasper, in that group of officers in Gillian's photograph-book.'

'Partly from the fact that a herd of young officers always look so exactly alike--at least in the eyes of elderly spinsters.'

'Jane!'

'Let us hope so, now that it is all over. This same d.i.c.k must have had something remarkable about him, to judge by the impression he seems to have left on all who came in his way, and I shall like to see his children.'

'You always do like queer people.'

'It is plain that we ought to take notice of them,' said Miss Mohun, 'and it is not wholesome for Gillian to think us backward in kindness to friends about whom she plainly has a little romance.'

She refrained from uttering a suspicion inspired by her visit that there had been more 'kindnesses' on her niece's part than she could quite account for. Yet she believed that she knew how all the girl's days were spent; was certain that the Sunday wanderings never went beyond the garden, and, moreover, she implicitly trusted Lily's daughter.

Gillian did not manifest as much delight and grat.i.tude at the invitation as her aunts expected. In point of fact, she resented Aunt Jane's making a visit of investigation without telling her, and she was uneasy lest there should have been or yet should be a disclosure that should make her proceedings appear clandestine. 'And they are not!' said she to herself with vehemence. 'Do I not write them all to my own mother? And did not Miss Vincent allow that one is not bound to treat aunts like parents?'

Even the discovery of Captain White's antecedents was almost an offence, for if her aunt would not let her inquire, why should she do so herself, save to preserve the choice morceau for her own superior intelligence?

Thus all the reply that Gillian deigned was, 'Of course I knew that Captain White could never have done anything to be ashamed of.'

The weather was too wet for any previous meetings, and it was on a wild stormy evening that the two sisters appeared at seven o'clock at Beechcroft Cottage. While hats and waterproofs were being taken off upstairs, Gillian found opportunity to give a warning against mentioning the Greek lessons. It was received with consternation.

'Oh, Miss Merrifield, do not your aunts know?'

'No. Why should they? Mamma does.'

'Not yet. And she is so far off! I wish Miss Mohun knew! I made sure that she did,' said Kalliope, much distressed.

'But why? It would only make a fuss.'

'I should be much happier about it.'

'And perhaps have it all upset.'

'That is the point. I felt that it must be all right as long as Miss Mohun sanctioned it; but I could not bear that we should be the means of bringing you into a sc.r.a.pe, by doing what she might disapprove while you are under her care.'

'Don't you think you can trust me to know my own relations?' said Gillian somewhat haughtily.

'Indeed, I did not mean that we are not infinitely obliged to you,' said Kalliope. 'It has made Alexis another creature to have some hope, and feel himself making progress.'

'Then why do you want to have a fuss, and a bother, and a chatter? If my father and mother don't approve, they can telegraph.'

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