“No,” replied Aunt Diana, sadly; “he has gone, never to return.”
I took a seat by the bedside, for I knew Aunt Di had a story to tell. Now and then she did let out her troubles to me, and then seemed to feel the better for it, and ready to go on for another six months. I was a sort of safety-valve for the high pressure of her many plans.
“You know all I have done for Iris,” she began, “the care I have bestowed upon her. Unhappy child! she has thrown aside a princely fortune with that frivolity which she inherits from her father’s family. My dear sister Clementina had no such traits.”
“No; even that comfort was denied to me,” said poor Aunt Di; “it would have been something, at any rate. But no; her conduct has been such that he simply announced to me that he had decided to take a leisurely trip around the world, and afterward he might spend a year or so in England, where the society was suited to his tastes--no shop-keepers, and that sort of thing.”
“Happy England!” I said; but Aunt Di went on with her lamentations. “He certainly admired Iris, and Iris has certainly encouraged him for months. It is all very well to talk about romance, but Iris is an extravagant little thing, and would be wretched as a poor man’s wife; even _you_ can not deny that, Niece Martha” (I could not, and did not). “Mokes would have suited her very well in the long-run, and now, by her own foolishness, she has lost him forever. I must confess I felt sick at heart, to say nothing of being chilled to the bone sitting on that damp stone.”
“Well, to tell the truth, I thought I would hint a little something to Mokes--delicately, of course--and, as we were walking to and fro on the sea-wall, I proposed strolling into the demi-lune.”
“Yes; it is quite retired, you know, and I had never seen it.”
But that was not all I had to lay up against that venerable and mysterious outlying fortification. The next afternoon I myself strolled up there, and passing by the two dragons, their two houses, and the supply of mutton hanging up below, I climbed the old stairway, and turning the angle, sat down on the grass to rest a while. I had a new novel, and leaning back comfortably against the parapet, I began to read; but the warm sunshine lulled me before I knew it into one of those soothing after-dinner naps so dear to forty years. The sound of voices woke me. “No; Miss Miles is superficial, not to say flippant.”