Think of that, my dear!" And so Mrs.Alwynn rambled on, recounting how Charles had shown her all the pictures himself, and the piazza where the orange and myrtle trees were, and how she and Mrs.Reynolds had gone for a drive together, "in a beautiful landau," etc., till they reached home.
As a rule Ruth rather shrank from travelling with Mrs.Alwynn, who always journeyed in her best clothes, "because you never know whom you may not meet." To stand on a platform with her was to be made conspicuous, and Ruth generally found herself unconsciously going into half mourning for the day, when she went anywhere by rail with her aunt.
To-day Mrs.Alwynn was more gayly dressed than ever, but as Ruth looked at her beaming face she felt nothing but a strange pleasure in the fact that Charles had not forgotten the little request which later events had completely effaced from her own memory.

He, it seemed, had remembered, and, in spite of what had passed, had done what she asked him.

She wished that she could have told him she was grateful.

Alas! there were other things that she wished she could have told him; that she was sorry she had misjudged him; that she understood him better now.

But what did it matter?
What did it matter?
She was going to marry Dare, and _he_ was the person whom she must try to understand for the remainder of her natural life.