Ever since the morning when he had told her in his studio the lovely legend of Latmos he could not persuade himself that he had not unwittingly told his own story.

Aunt Winnifred showered the choicest tracts about his room.

She said with a sigh that she was sure he had experienced no change of heart; and Arthur replied, with a melancholy smile, "Not the slightest." The kind old lady was sorely puzzled.

It did not occur to her that her Arthur could be the victim of an unfortunate attachment, like the love-lorn heroes of whom she had read in the evil days when she read novels.

It did not occur to her, because she could as easily have supposed a rose-tree to resist June as any woman her splendid Arthur.
If some gossip to whom she sighed and shook her head, and wondered what could possibly ail Arthur--who still ate his dinner heartily, and had as many orders for portraits as he cared to fulfill--suggested that there was a woman in the case, good Aunt Winnifred smiled bland incredulity.
"Dear Mrs.Toxer, I should like to see that woman!" Then she plied her knitting-needles nimbly, sighed, scratched her head with a needle, counted her stitches, and said, "Sometimes I can't but hope that it is concern of mind, without his knowing it." Mrs.Toxer also knitted, and scratched, and counted.
"No, ma'am; much more likely concern of heart with a full consciousness of it.