“She is a wonderful woman, to have written that successful novel,” said Aunt Harriet, “and I am going to write her a congratulatory note, now you have bought that stationery at Tiffany’s.  I feel that such a subject demands special paper.  She is a wonderful woman and her family have every reason to be proud of her.”

“Yes,” said Annie.

“It is rather odd, and I have often thought so,” said Aunt Harriet, moving alongside with stately sweeps of black skirts, “that you have shown absolutely no literary taste.  As you know, I have often written poetry, of course not for publication, and my friends have been so good as to admire it.”

“Yes, Aunt Harriet,” said Annie.

“I realise that you have never appreciated my poems,” said Aunt Harriet tartly.

“I don’t think I understand poetry very well,” little Annie said with meekness.

“It does require a peculiar order of mind, and you have never seemed to me in the least poetical or imaginative,” said her aunt in an appeased voice.  “For instance, I could not imagine your writing a book like Mrs. Edes, and The Poor Lady was anonymous, and anybody might have written it as far as one knew.  But I should never have imagined her for a moment as capable of doing it.”

“No,” said Annie.

Then they had come to the parsonage and Jane Riggs, as rigid as starched linen could make a human being, admitted them, and presently after a little desultory conversation, the collection, which was really a carefully made one, and exceedingly good and interesting, was being displayed.  Then came the charming little tea which Von Rosen had planned; then the suggestion with regard to the rose-garden and Aunt Harriet’s terrified refusal, knowing as she knew the agony of sneezes and sniffs sure to follow its acceptance; and then Annie, a vision in blue, was walking among the roses with Von Rosen and both were saying things which they never could remember afterward—­about things in which neither had the very slightest interest.  It was only when they had reached the end of the pergola, trained over with climbers, and the two were seated on a rustic bench therein, that the conversation to be remembered began.

Chapter VIII

The conversation began, paradoxically, with a silence.  Otherwise, it would have begun with platitudes.  Since neither Von Rosen nor Annie Eustace were given usually to platitudes, the silence was unavoidable.  Both instinctively dreaded with a pleasurable dread the shock of speech.  In a way this was the first time the two had been alone with any chance of a seclusion protracted beyond a very few minutes.  In the house was Aunt Harriet Eustace, who feared a rose, as she might have feared the plague, and, moreover, as Annie comfortably knew, had imparted the knowledge to Von Rosen as they had walked down the pergola, that she would immediately fall asleep.