THE LATER LIFE
anxiously and tenderly, while he bent still nearer to her. Then, suddenly, he took her hand, pressed it impulsively. Marianne looked up in alarm. Her eyes met, at the far end of the long drawing-room, the eyes of Aunt Constance, the dull, staring eyes of her mother. She drew away her hand . . . and her pale face flushed with a glow of shame . . .
Grandmamma stood in the middle of the drawing-room, a little sad at the gloom which the recent mourning had cast over her rooms. The children took their leave.
