"I declare! No; I had forgotten it!" Mr. Underwood exclaimed.
"It's well for you she isn't here to hear you say that!" Mrs. Dean remarked, smiling.
"Puss knows her old father well enough to know he wouldn't forget her very long. Bring the picture out, Marcia."
Darrell heard Mrs. Dean approaching, and turned, with the glory of the sunset in his eyes.
"Don't you want to see Katherine's new picture?" she inquired.
Her words instantly recalled the portrait he had studied the preceding night, and with that in his mind he took the picture she handed him and silently compared the two.
Ah, the beauty of the spring, everywhere confronting him, was in that face also; the joy of a life as yet pure, untainted, and untrammelled. It was like looking into the faces of the spring flowers which reflect only the sunshine, the purity and the sweetness of earth. There was a touch of womanly dignity, too, in the poise of the head, but the beautiful eyes, though lighted with the faint dawn of coming womanhood, were the same as those that had appealed to him the night before with their wistful longing.
"It is a fine portrait, but as I do not remember her, I cannot judge whether it is like herself or not," he said, handing the picture to Mr. Underwood, who seemed almost to devour it with his eyes, though he spoke no word and not a muscle moved in his stern, immobile face.
"She is getting to be such a young lady," remarked Mrs. Dean, "that I expect when she comes home we will feel as though she had grown away from us all."