ty woman, but I did not notice that at the time. But a faint,
indefinable fragrance seemed to envelop her. I loved to stroke her soft
white hand, and to turn the emerald ring on her third finger, and to
lean against her soft shoulder. Aunt Emmy's cheek was very soft too, and
so was her full, silky hair, which she wore parted all her life, though
it was never the fashion to do so that I can remember, though I am told
it is now the _dernier cri_ among the _debutantes_. Aunt Emmy had a
beautifully shaped head, and the whitest brow and neck that I have ever
seen. And she had a low voice, and was very dignified. I do not think
that she was a very wise woman, or that she had ever wrestled with the
deeper problems of life, or that the mystery of pain had ever caused her
faith to totter. But she was very good to live with. She devoted
herself.

She never had her own way in anything that I can remember. The house
never represented her. The furniture was leathern and velvet and
stout-looking, the kind of furniture which seems to aim at being more or
less exact moulds of the forms of middle-aged men. The armchairs were
like commodious hip-baths in plush. Aunt Emmy and I were lost in them. I
remember once walking as a child through the wilderness of armchairs at
Maple's and thinking they all looked like Uncle Tom. A good deal of
Utrecht velvet had gone to the upholstering of that house in Pembridge
Square. It was comfortable, airless, flowerless, with gravy-coloured
walls. As I grew older I wondered why it was all so ugly and dreary. But
I found there were less means than I had supposed, and though the
cooking remained excellent, flowers and new chintzes were dispensed with
as unnecessary. Aunt Emmy opened a window surreptitiously now and then,
but Uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom hated draughts, and they did not get off
to sleep so quickly after dinner if the drawing-room had been aired
during the meal. The dining-room windows were never opened at all,
except when Uncle Thomas was too unwell to come in and Uncle Tom was
away.

Many men had wished to marry Aunt Emmy; not only sedentary professional
men in long frock-coats, full to the brim of the best food, like Uncle
Tom; but nice, lean, hungry-looking, open-air men who were majors, or
country squires, or something interesting of that kind, whose clothes
sat well on them, and who drew up in the Row on little skittish,
curveting polo-ponies when Aunt Emmy and I walked there. I once aske