r. I agreed with him.
It would be easier for me to discuss it with you. It would not be for
the first time."

It would not indeed!

"Aggie," said Aunt Mary instantly, "you expressed a wish on your way
here to see Bessie's fossils. You will go to the schoolroom and
investigate them."

"I think they are kept locked," said Aunt Aggie faintly. She longed to
stay. She had guessed the subject of the letter. She took in a love
affair the fevered interest with which the unmarried approach the
subject.

"They are unlocked," said Aunt Mary with decision.

Aunt Aggie swallowed the remains of her tea, and holding a little bitten
bun in her hand slid out of the room. She never openly opposed her
sister, with whom she lived part of the year when she let her cottage at
Saundersfoot to relations in need of sea air.

An unmistakable aspect of concentration deepened in Aunt Mary's fine
countenance.

"Magdalen," she said at once, "in the presence of that weak
sentimentalist my lips are closed. But now that we are alone, and as it
is your wish to reopen the subject, it is my duty to inform myself
whether anything has transpired about Everard Constable--Lord
Lossiemouth, as I suppose he now is."

"Nothing," said Magdalen with a calmness that was almost cheerful. If
she was as sensitive as she looked she had a marvellous power of
concealing it. She never shrank. She was apparently never wounded. She
seldom showed that any subject jarred on her. It is affirmed that
animals develop certain organs to meet the exigencies of their
environment. A sole's eye (or is it a sand-dab's?) travels up round its
head regardless of appearances when it finds it is more wanted there
than on the lower side. We often see a similar distortion in the mental
features of the wives of literary men. So perhaps also Magdalen had
adapted herself to the Bellairs' environment, with which it was obvious
that she had almost nothing in common except her name.

Aunt Mary loved Magdalen in a way, yet she never spared her the
discussion of that long-ago attachment of her youth, violently
mismanaged by Colonel Bellairs. The rose of Aunt Mary's real affection
had a little scent, but it was set round with thorns.

"He has behaved disgracefully," she said, looking with anger and
disappointment at her niece's faded face.

"We have discussed that before," said Magdalen tranquilly. "I, as you
know, do not blame him. But it is all a hundred years ago, and better
forgott