Lady Gerardine showed herself as gently indifferent to reproach as she had been to solicitude. But the physician's wisdom was so far justified that, from the moment she was told of his decision, she roused herself and began to take some interest in life again.
"Home," she said, "England! Oh, I am glad!"
And, by-and-by, when she was alone with Aspasia, she began, to the girl's delight, to discuss plans with quite an eagerness in her weak voice.
They were in a long cool room, one of the bygone zenana apartments preserved practically untouched, which opened upon the one side into the garden through the arches of a colonnade, and was secluded even from that quiet spot by marvellous stone lacework screens, each different down to the smallest detail of design, yet all in harmony. However the small dusky Eastern beauties may have rebelled in their day against these exquisite prison walls; the present Northern mistress of the whilom palace found pleasure in their very seclusion, their apartness; and, according to her wont, she feasted her soul lazily on their artistic perfections.
She was stretched on a highly painted Indian couch which had been converted into a sofa, and let her eyes wander from the carving of the window screens themselves to their even lovelier reflections, cut in grey shadow on the white marble of the pavement. From the inner rooms the waters of the baths played murmurous accompaniment to her thought and her interrupted speech. Aspasia, squatting on the rug at the foot of the couch, listened, commented, and suggested.
The latter had not yet quite overcome her horrified sense of guilt in connection with Lady Gerardine's singular breakdown. Without being able to piece together any reasonable explanation of late events, she felt instinctively that here was more than met the eye; that there was in the web of her aunt's life, so to speak, an under-warp of unknown colour and unexpected strength; that behind the placid surface there lay secret depths; and that her own trifling treachery had unwittingly set forces in motion with incalculable possibilities. She had gone about, these days, with a solemn look--a living presentment of childish anxiety. The scared shadow was still on her pretty face as she now sat in attendance.