took her a cup.

She was sitting in a low chair with her back to the light. I could see
that she had been crying, but she was quite calm. She had a suspiciously
clean pocket-handkerchief in her hand. Her sitting-room was a small
north chamber under the roof, but it was the place I liked best in the
house. On her rare expeditions abroad, before Uncle Thomas had become
too ill to be left, she had picked up some quaint pieces of pottery and
a few old Italian mirrors. The little white room with its pale blue
linen coverings had an atmosphere and a refinement of its own. It was
spring, and there was a bunch of daffodils near the open window in a
blue-and-white oil-jar with _Ole Scorpio_ on it.

Aunt Emmy drank some tea, and remarked that I made it better than she
did.

"Your Uncle Tom has a very kind heart," she said, looking a little
pugnaciously at me. "It is so like him, just when he might naturally be
taken up with his own affairs, to be anxious about me."

We each knew the other was not deceived.

I longed to say, "Why not marry Colonel Stoddart?"

I had only seen him on horseback. I did not know how he looked on the
ground, but I would have married him myself in a second if he had asked
me, partly no doubt because he was a little like Lord K----, the hero of
my teens to whom I had never spoken, and partly because he was the exact
opposite of Uncle Tom. How Miss Collett _could_! How anybody could! Yet
Uncle Tom always talked as if he had only to choose among the flower of
English womanhood, and the stouter and more repellent he grew the more
communicative and conscientious he became about his fear of raising
expectations in female bosoms which he might not be able to gratify. How
I scorned Uncle Tom when he talked like that, knowing as I did--but
neither he nor Aunt Emmy knew I knew (it was always like that, they
always thought I did not know things)--knowing as I did that Miss Rose
Delaine and Miss Wright had both refused him. I did not realise in my
intolerant youth that the anxiety of some middle-aged bachelors still to
appear eligible, the way their minds hover round imaginary conquests,
has its pathetic side. Looking back, I believe now that Miss Collett was
not by any means poor Uncle Tom's first choice, but his last chance. And
perhaps he was her last chance too.

"I know father is dying. I have known it some time," said Aunt Emmy, and
her face became convulsed. "He spoke so beautifully about it only
yest