"The deuce you did! Why, I heard him ask you. It was on board ship, and----"
"And before he asked, unless you were deaf, you heard me say I couldn't work up any enthusiasm about the next book we'd promised our publisher to write because we'd sold our last car and hadn't time to make up our minds about a new one, and we had no friends to give us good 'tips' about the country. It was then he asked me what country we wanted to write about, and I said Scotland."
"Well, yes, I suppose I heard you say all that, now you remind me of it. But it wasn't hinting, because you didn't know he was going to Scotland for his rest cure."
"Oh, yes, I did. I read it in the New York _Sun_ before we sailed. And when I said we'd accept his invitation if he'd accept ours, Mrs. Keeling hadn't offered me this house."
"I was sure she would, because she told me I had only to ask. She was dying to lend it. She wanted to be able to tell everybody that Aline West and Basil Norman lived in her house for a fortnight in August. It's a great feather in her cap; and Ian Somerled coming to visit us here is something she'll _never_ get over as long as she lives. I marconied her an hour after he'd said that he would come to us after London, and we'd begin our motor tour from Carlisle. 'Twas only taking Time by the forelock to tell him we _had_ been invited. It _was_ bad luck poor Mrs. Keeling being ill when she got my wire, and she really was a trump to turn out and go to a nursing home."
"Good heavens, is that what she did? I didn't know----"
"Of course not. But you needn't mind so dreadfully. She's _much_ more comfortable in the nursing home with the best attention than in her own. And, as a reward, we'll dedicate the book to her."
Aline said this as a queen might have suggested lending her crown to a loyal servitor. Basil laughed, rather uncomfortably, and his sister looked up hastily into his face, to see if he were making fun of her. Just then they were drawing near the open windows of the drawing-room, and the lamplight shone out so brightly through the old-fashioned embroidered lace curtains that she could see his profile. Hers too was clearly outlined as she lifted her chin anxiously.
The brother and sister were both good to look at, in ways so different that the two made a striking contrast. Aline knew that in appearance they were a romantic pair of travelling companions. Every one stared at them when they were together, for he was very tall and dark, more like an Italian or a Spaniard than an Englishman, and she was gracefully slender and fair, dressing with a subtle appreciation of herself and all her points. Aline West's and Basil Norman's photographs, taken together or apart, for newspapers and magazines, were extremely effective, and were considered by publishers to help the sale of their books. Norman might have sat for Titian's Portrait of a Gentleman: and there were those who thought Mrs. West not unlike Lady Hamilton. Since the first expression of this opinion in print, she had changed the fashion of her hair, and at fancy-dress balls, of which she was fond, she generally appeared as the beautiful Emma. Certainly the cast of her features and the cutting of her lips faintly recalled those of Romney's ideal; but Mrs. West's pretty pale face had only two expressions: the one when she smiled--always the same delicate curving of the lips which lit no beam in the deep-set forget-me-not eyes; the one when she was grave and wistfully intellectual. She had a beautiful round white throat which she never hid with a high collar. Her hair was of that sun-in-a-mist gold that eventually fades almost imperceptibly into gray--if left to itself. But in Aline's case it was improbable that it would be left to itself. Every morning when dressing she examined it anxiously, even fearfully, to see whether it was becoming thinner or losing its misty glints of gold. Yet she knew that her fears were likely to advance the day she dreaded, and tried to shut them out of her mind.