throw
over her head a black-lace scarf which she had been carrying on her arm.
"She has been crying."

"She feels the trouble that has come upon us all, I suppose," said
Hubert rather awkwardly. He pressed forward a little, so as to hold open
the conservatory door for his aunt. He was glad of the opportunity of
averting his face for a moment from the scrutiny of her keen eyes.

"That is not all," said Miss Vane, as she quitted the great glass-house,
with its wealth of bloom and perfume, for the freshness of the outer
air. She struck straight across the sunny lawn, leaving the house
behind. "That is not all. Come away from the house--I don't want what I
have to say to you to be overheard, and walls have ears sometimes. Your
sister Florence, Hubert, was never remarkable for a very feeling heart.
She is, and always was, the most unsympathetic person I ever knew."

"She has perhaps greater depth of feeling than we give her credit for,"
said Hubert, thinking of certain words that had been said, of certain
scenes on which his eyes had rested in by-gone days.

"Not she--excuse me! Hubert, I know that she is your sister, and that
men do not like to hear their sisters spoken against; but I must remind
you that Florence lived ten years under my roof, and that a woman is
more likely to understand a girl's nature than a young man."

"I never pretended to understand Florence," said Hubert helplessly; "she
got beyond me long ago."

"She is a good deal older than you, my dear, and she has had more
experiences than she would like to have known. How do I know? I only
guess, but I am certain of what I say. She is nine-and-twenty, and she
has been out in the world for the last eight years. There is no telling
what she may not have gone through in that space of time."

Hubert was dumb--it was not in his power just then to contradict his
aunt's assertions.

"I would gladly have kept her under the shelter of my roof," said Miss
Vane, pursuing the tenor of her thoughts without much reference to her
listener's condition of mind; "but you know as well as I do that she
refused to live with me after she was twenty-one--would be a governess.
Ugh! Wonder how she liked it?"

"She seemed to like it very well; she stayed four years in Russia."

"Yes, and hoped to get married there, but failed. I know Flossy. She
must have mismanaged matters frightfully, for she is an attractive girl.
She went to Scotland then for a year or two, you know, an