ats above blew cold
upon their gesticulatory devotee, and was besides ungrateful; she was
more than commonly assured of his being, as she called him, "a sphinx."
His behaviour to his legally wedded wife confirmed the charge.

She checked her flow to resume the question. "So, then, where are we
now? He allows you liberally for pin-money in addition to your own small
independent income. Satisfaction with that would warrant him to suppose
his whole duty done by you."

"We are where we were, aunty; the month has made no change," said Aminta
in languor.

"And you as patient as ever?"

"I am supposed to have everything a woman can require."

"Can he possibly think it? And I have to warn you, child, that lawyers
are not so absolving as the world is with some of the ladies Lord Ormont
allows you to call your friends. I have been hearing--it is not mere
airy tales one hears from lawyers about cases in Courts of Law. Tighten
your lips as you like; I say nothing to condemn or reflect on Mrs.
Lawrence Finchley. I have had my eyes a little opened, that is all.
Oh, I know my niece Aminta, when it's a friend to stand by; but our
position--thanks to your inscrutable lord and master--demands of us the
utmost scrupulousness, or it soon becomes a whirl and scandal flying
about, and those lawyers picking up and putting together. I have had a
difficulty to persuade them!... and my own niece! whom I saw married at
the British Embassy in Madrid, as I take good care to tell everybody;
for it was my doing; I am the responsible person! and by an English
Protestant clergyman, to all appearance able to walk erect in and out of
any of these excellent new Life Assurance offices they are starting for
the benefit of widows and orphans, and deceased within six days of the
ceremony--if ceremony one may call the hasty affair in those foreign
places. My dear, the instant I heard it I had a presentiment, 'All has
gone well up to now.' I remember murmuring the words. Then your letter,
received in that smelly Barcelona: Lord Ormont was carrying you off to
Granada--a dream of my infancy! It may not have been his manoeuvre, but
it was the beginning of his manoeuvres."

Aminta shuddered. "And tra-la-la, and castanets, and my Cid! my Cid! and
the Alhambra, the Sierra Nevada, and ay di me, Alhama; and Boabdil el
Chico and el Zagal and Fray Antonio Agapida!" She flung out the rattle,
yawning, with her arms up and her head back, in the posture of a woman
wou