As she walked down the street towards the Strand again, I saw her sway once, a little.
"Oh," I exclaimed involuntarily, "she ought not to walk. I don't believe she's well. She ought not to be alone, perhaps----"
And I turned to the young man to whom I suppose I have a right to turn, since he has asked me to marry him. At that moment I felt that it was such a comfort he was there; steady and reliable and conscientious.
"Mr. Brace!" I appealed to him a little shyly. "If you would be so kind! I wonder if you would mind--I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to take my aunt home?"
"Oh--er--yes, I should be delighted," said Mr. Brace quickly, but flushing all over his blonde face and looking suddenly and acutely miserable.
It was a great astonishment to me that the young man wasn't off to carry out this wish of mine before it had finished leaving my lips. Still, it wasn't his fault at all. Oh, no; I see his point of view quite well.
"That is--Do you think, perhaps, that your aunt might not find it distasteful to be addressed by me? You see the last time she spoke to me, it was--er--not on the friendliest terms, and--er----"
"Aw, look here, Mr. Brace, don't you worry!" broke in the joyously, matter-of-fact voice of London's Love. "You stay with your young lady and come on to lunch. Her aunt's being attended to all right without you. Look at that!"
"That" was certainly an unexpected scene towards which Miss Vi Vassity waved her tightly gloved hand.
There, on the pavement at the end of the turning into the Strand, stood the scraggy, erect, grey-clad, frumpily hatted figure of my Aunt Anastasia. And beside her, close beside her, was the Honourable James Burke! He must have broken away from the group almost at the moment that she did, and gone up to her.
The "cheek" of that man! Is there anybody that he wouldn't mind tackling?
For he was leaning confidentially towards my so forbidding aunt. He was talking fluently to her about something. He was smiling down at her--I caught the curve of his cheek in profile.
And--could it be true?--my Aunt Anastasia actually didn't mind him!
I only saw her back; but you know how expressive backs can be. And the usually rigid, flat shoulders with the Victorian corset-ridge, and the lady-like waist and scarcely existent hips of my aunt were positively expressing mollification, friendliness, gratification!