"No!" said Lady Dashwood. "John doesn't like my being away. An old soldier has much to make him sad now, but no----" Then she added in an undertone, "Jim ..." and she stared into her niece's face.
Under the portrait of that bold, handsome, unscrupulous Warden of King's a faithful clock ticked to the passing of time. The time it showed now was twenty minutes to eight. Both ladies in silence had turned to the fire and they were now both standing each with one foot on the fender and were looking up at the portrait and not at the clock. Neither of them, however, thought of the portrait. They merely looked at it--as one must look at something.
"Jim," sighed Lady Dashwood. "You don't know him, May."
"He's not ill. He is terribly depressed at times because so many of his old pupils are gone--for ever. But it's not that, not that that I mean. You know what learned men are, May?" Lady Dashwood did not ask a question, she was making an assertion.
May Dashwood still gazed at the portrait but now she lowered her eyelids, looking critically through the narrowed space with her grey eyes.
"No, I don't know what learned men are," she replied very slowly. "I have met so few."
"Jim has taken----" and again Lady Dashwood hesitated.
"Not to Eau Perrier?" almost whispered Mrs. Dashwood.
"Certainly not," exclaimed Lady Dashwood. "I don't think he has touched alcohol since the War. It's nothing so elementary as that. I feel as if I were treacherous in talking about it--and yet I must talk about it--because you have to help me. A really learned man is so----"
"Do you mean that he knows all about Julius Cæsar," said May, "and nothing about himself?"
"I shouldn't mind that so much," said the elder lady, grasping eagerly at this introduction to an analysis of the learned man. "I had better blurt it all out, May. Well--he knows nothing about women----" Lady Dashwood spoke with angry emphasis, but in a whisper.
"Ah!" said Mrs. Dashwood, and now she stared deeply at one particular block of wood that was spitting quietly at the attacking flames. She raised her arm and laid her hand on her aunt Lena's shoulder. Then she squeezed the shoulder slightly as if to gently squeeze out a little more information.