“Thank you, thank you!” Emily answered.  “Everything in the world seems changed, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, everything.”

They stood and gazed into each other’s eyes a few seconds, and then loosed hands with a little laugh and sat down to talk.

It was, in fact, Lady Agatha who talked most, because Emily Fox-Seton led her on and aided her to delicate expansion by her delight in all that in these days made up her existence of pure bliss.  It was as if an old-time fairy story were being enacted before Emily’s eyes.  Agatha without doubt had grown lovelier, she thought; she seemed even fairer, more willowy, the forget-me-not eyes were of a happier blue, as forget-me-nots growing by clear water-sides are bluer than those grown in a mere garden.  She appeared, perhaps, even a little taller, and her small head had, if such a thing were possible, a prettier flower-like poise.  This, at least, Emily thought, and found her own happiness added to by her belief in her fancy.  She felt that nothing was to be wondered at when she heard Agatha speak of Sir Bruce.  She could not utter his name or refer to any act of his without a sound in her voice which had its parallel in the light floating haze of blush on her cheeks.  In her intercourse with the world in general she would have been able to preserve her customary sweet composure, but Emily Fox-Seton was not the world.  She represented a something which was so primitively of the emotions that one’s heart spoke and listened to her.  Agatha was conscious that Miss Fox-Seton had seen at Mallowe—­she could never quite understand how it had seemed so naturally to happen—­a phase of her feelings which no one else had seen before.  Bruce had seen it since, but only Bruce.  There had actually been a sort of confidence between them—­a confidence which had been like intimacy, though neither of them had been effusive.

“Mamma is so happy,” the girl said.  “It is quite wonderful.  And Alix and Hilda and Millicent and Eve—­oh! it makes such a difference to them.  I shall be able,” with a blush which expressed a world of relieved affection, “to give them so much pleasure.  Any girl who marries happily and—­and well—­can alter everything for her sisters, if she remembers.  You see, I shall have reason to remember.  I know things from experience.  And Bruce is so kind, and gay, and proud of their prettiness.  Just imagine their excitement at all being bridesmaids!  Bruce says we shall be like a garden of spring flowers.  I am so glad,” her eyes suddenly quite heavenly in their joyful relief, “that he is young!”

The next second the heavenly relieved look died away.  The exclamation had been involuntary.  It had sprung from her memory of the days when she had dutifully accepted, as her portion, the possibility of being smiled upon by Walderhurst, who was two years older than her father, and her swift realisation of this fact troubled her.  It was indelicate to have referred to the mental image even ever so vaguely.