d
her, after a certain good-looking Major Stoddart had ridden on, why she
did not marry, but she only said reprovingly, with great dignity:

"You don't understand such matters, my dear, or you would know that I
could not possibly leave your Uncle Thomas."

I was silenced. I felt with bitterness that this could not be her whole
reason for celibacy, but that, owing to the purely superficial fact that
my hair was still in a pigtail, she supposed I was unable to comprehend
"lots of things" that I felt I understood perfectly, and on which my
mind was already working with an energy which would have surprised her
had she guessed it.

By this time I worshipped Aunt Emmy, who represented in my somewhat
colourless orphaned existence the beautiful and romantic side of life.
Aunt Emmy looked romantic, and the contrast between her refined, gentle
self-effacement and the commonplace egotism of her two men was of the
glaring nature which appeals to a young girl's imagination.

I never forgot Major Stoddart, and when I was eighteen, and had left
school and was living in Pembridge Square, I had the good fortune to
come in for the remains of a scene between Aunt Emmy and Uncle Tom--the
very day after I had turned up my hair.

It was at luncheon, to which I came in late. Uncle Thomas was in bed
with gout, and Uncle Tom did not consider me of enough consequence to
matter. He had not realised even _now_ that I was a grown-up woman.
Looking back after all these years, I am not sure that he was not astute
enough to hope that I might prove an ally.

"What you have got to do, Emmy, is to think of the future," he was
saying, scooping all the visible eggs out of an aspic pie. "It's no
manner of use living only in the present. You think this comfortable
home will go on for ever, where you have lived in luxury. It won't. It
can't. It's not in the nature of things. I saw Blackett yesterday
(Blackett was the doctor), and he told me that if the governor's gout
rises--and nothing he can do can keep it down--he won't last more than a
year at longest. In the nature of things," Uncle Tom continued, bolting
half an egg, "I shall then marry. In fact--in short----"

"Has Miss Collett accepted you?" said Aunt Emmy tremulously.

Miss Collett was a person of means, and of somewhat bulged attractions
for those who admire size, of whom Uncle Tom had often spoken as a
deuced fine woman.

"She has," said Uncle Tom. "I made pretty sure of that before I sai