Just then the colonel turned to her, holding his glass in his hand.
"We must not forget that it is your birthday, my dear," he said, and his natural smile came back. "Rachel," he added, speaking to his sister across the young girl, "let us drink Sylvia’s health on her eighteenth birthday."
Miss Wimpole usually took a little thin Moselle with the cold water she drank. She solemnly raised the glass, and inclined her head as she looked first at Sylvia and then at the colonel.
Then they all relapsed into silence. The people at the big table talked fast, in low tones, and the clattering of dishes and plates and knives and forks went on steadily and untunefully all around. Sylvia felt lonely in the unindividual atmosphere of the Swiss hotel. She hated the terribly handsome young man, with a mortal hatred, because he made the colonel look old. She could not help seeing him whenever she turned towards Wimpole. At last she spoke softly, looking down at her plate.
"Uncle Richard," she said, to call his attention.
He was not really her uncle, and she almost always called him ’colonel,’ half playfully, and because she had hated the suggestion of age that is conveyed by the word ’uncle.’ Wimpole turned to her quietly.
"I suppose I was very foolish to-day, wasn’t I?" asked Sylvia, very low indeed, and a bright blush played upon her pretty face.
The colonel was a courteous man, and was also very fond of her.
"A woman need never be wise when she is lovely," he said in his rather old-fashioned way, and he smiled affectionately at the young girl. "It is quite enough if she is good."
But she did not smile. On the contrary, her face became very grave.
"I am in earnest," she said, and she waited a moment before saying more. "I was very foolish," she continued, thoughtfully. "I did not understand--or I did not realize--I don’t know. You have been so much to me all my life, and there is nobody like you, of course. It seemed to me--I mean, it seems to me--that is very much like really caring for some one, isn’t it? You know what I mean. I can’t express it."
"You mean that it is a good deal like love, I suppose," answered the colonel, speaking gravely now. "Yes, I suppose that love is better when people believe each other to be angels. But it is not that sort of thing which makes love what it is."