her family have every reason to be proud of her."

"Yes," said Annie.

"It is rather odd, and I have often thought so," said Aunt Harriet,
moving alongside with stately sweeps of black skirts, "that you have
shown absolutely no literary taste. As you know, I have often written
poetry, of course not for publication, and my friends have been so
good as to admire it."

"Yes, Aunt Harriet," said Annie.

"I realise that you have never appreciated my poems," said Aunt
Harriet tartly.

"I don't think I understand poetry very well," little Annie said with
meekness.

"It does require a peculiar order of mind, and you have never seemed
to me in the least poetical or imaginative," said her aunt in an
appeased voice. "For instance, I could not imagine your writing a
book like Mrs. Edes, and _The Poor Lady_ was anonymous, and anybody
might have written it as far as one knew. But I should never have
imagined her for a moment as capable of doing it."

"No," said Annie.

Then they had come to the parsonage and Jane Riggs, as rigid as
starched linen could make a human being, admitted them, and presently
after a little desultory conversation, the collection, which was
really a carefully made one, and exceedingly good and interesting,
was being displayed. Then came the charming little tea which Von
Rosen had planned; then the suggestion with regard to the rose-garden
and Aunt Harriet's terrified refusal, knowing as she knew the agony
of sneezes and sniffs sure to follow its acceptance; and then Annie,
a vision in blue, was walking among the roses with Von Rosen and both
were saying things which they never could remember afterward--about
things in which neither had the very slightest interest. It was only
when they had reached the end of the pergola, trained over with
climbers, and the two were seated on a rustic bench therein, that the
conversation to be remembered began.

Chapter VIII

The conversation began, paradoxically, with a silence. Otherwise, it
would have begun with platitudes. Since neither Von Rosen nor Annie
Eustace were given usually to platitudes, the silence was
unavoidable. Both instinctively dreaded with a pleasurable dread the
shock of speech. In a way this was the first time the two had been
alone with any chance of a seclusion protracted beyond a very few
minutes. In the house was Aunt Harriet Eustace, who feared a rose, as
she might have feared the plague, and, moreover, as Annie comfortably
kn