"—Will find her detestable," said Kenyon, briskly, "as I and Ethel do. You'll excuse this expression of opinion; you've heard it before."
For a moment Caspar Brooke's face was overcast; then he broke into uneasy laughter, and rose from his chair, shaking himself a little as a big dog sometimes does when it comes out of the water.
"You are incorrigible," he said. "A veritable heretic on the matter of my friend, Mrs. Romaine. By the by, I must remind you, Kenyon, that Mrs. Romaine is a very old friend of mine."
His manner changed slightly as he spoke. There was a little touch of quiet hauteur in his look and tone, as if he wished to repel unsolicited criticism. Maurice understood the man too well to be offended, and merely changed the subject.
But when, after half an hour's chat, the young doctor left the house, his mind reverted to the topic which Mr. Brooke had broached.
"Mrs. Romaine, indeed! Why, the man's mad—to introduce her as a friend to his daughter! Does not all the world know that Mrs. Romaine caused the separation between him and his wife? And will the poor girl know? or has she been kept in the dark completely as to the state of affairs? Upon my word I'm sorry for her. It strikes me that she will have a hard row to hoe, if Mrs. Romaine is at her father's ear."
CHAPTER V.
OLIVER.
Mr. Brooke had not long quitted Mrs. Romaine's drawing-room when it was entered by another man, whose personal resemblance to Mrs. Romaine herself was so striking that there could be little doubt as to their close relationship to one another. It was one of those curious likenesses that exist and thrive upon difference. Rosalind was not tall, and she was undeniably plump; while her younger brother, Oliver Trent, was above middle height, and of a spare habit. The creamy white of Mrs. Romaine's complexion had turned to deadly pallor in Oliver's thin, hairless face: and her most striking features were accentuated, and even exaggerated in his. Her arched and mobile eyebrows, her dark eyes, her broad nostrils, curved mouth, and finely-shaped chin, were all to be found, with a subtle unlikeness, in Oliver's face, and the jetty hair, short as it was on the man's head, grew low down on the brow and the nape of the neck exactly as hers did—although this resemblance was obscured by the fact that Rosalind wore a fringe, and carefully curled all the short hairs at the back of her head.