the advantages of the difference were on her own side. "Now sit down
and have your tea, my dear."

Rachel obeyed with a vague wonder in her mind as to why that look of
tolerance should be so familiar. It seemed to her as if it was
something she had felt rather than seen; and as tea progressed she
found herself half furtively studying the raddled ugliness of her
aunt's face in the search for possible relics of a beautiful youth.

"Ah, I think you're beginning to see it, too," Miss Deane said, marking
her niece's scrutiny. "It grows on one, doesn't it?"

Rachel shivered slightly. "Yes, it does," she said experimentally,
watching her aunt's face for some indication of a malicious teasing
humour. It seemed to her so incredible that this hideous parody of her
own youth could honestly believe that any physical likeness _still_
existed.

Miss Deane, however, was faintly simpering. "I have been told that I've
changed very little," she said; and Rachel suppressed a sigh of
impatience at the reflection that she was expected to play up to this
absurd fantasy.

"Of course, I can't judge of that," she said, "as we met for the first
time five minutes ago."

"No, no, you can't judge of _that_," her aunt replied, with the
half-bashful emphasis of one who awaits a compliment.

Rachel decided to plunge. "But you do look extraordinarily young for