“Oh, no, I have not forgotten you, Mr. Chetwynd; but I hardly expected you to recall me among all Jane’s young friends.”
“I do. I do perfectly,” he replied, with his eyes fixed on Lady Jane, who clung to Mrs. Lanier and looked at the tall, grave stranger with timid scrutiny.
Then he held out his hand to the child. “And this is Jane Chetwynd’s daughter. There is no doubt of it. She is the image of her mother,” he said in a low, restrained voice. “I was not prepared to see such a living proof. She is my little Jane as she was when a child—my little Jane—my darling! Mrs. Lanier, will you excuse me!—the sight of her has quite unnerved me”; and suddenly sinking into a chair he pressed the child to his heart and hid his face on her bright golden head.
What passed between Lady Jane and her grandfather, Mr. and Mrs. Lanier never knew, for they slipped quietly out of the room, and left the cold, stern man alone with the last of his family—the child of that idolized but disobedient daughter, who had caused him untold sorrow, and whom he had never forgiven until that moment, when he held in his arms, close to his heart, the child, her living image.
It was some time before Mr. Chetwynd appeared, and when he did he was as cold and self-possessed as if he had never felt a throb of emotion, or shed a tear of sorrow on the pretty head of the child, who held his hand, and prattled as freely and confidingly as though she had known him always.
“What will Mother Margaret say,” she exclaimed, looking at Mrs. Lanier with wide, glistening eyes, “when I tell her that I’ve found Tony and my grandpapa both in one Christmas? I never saw a grandpapa before. Pepsie read to me about one in a book, and he was very cross; but this one isn’t. I think he’s very good, because he says that he will give me everything I wish, and I know I shall love him a great deal.”
“Now, Lady Jane, confess to me, and I’ll never tell,” whispered Arthur with an air of great secrecy. “Which do you love best, Tony or your new grandpapa?”
She raised her clear eyes to the roguish face of the boy with a little perplexed smile, and then replied unhesitatingly: “Well, I’ve known Tony longer, but I think I’ll love my grandpapa as well by and by, because, you know, he’s my grandpapa.”
Arthur laughed heartily at the clever way in which she evaded the question, and remarked to Mrs. Lanier that Lady Jane would wind her grandfather around her little finger before a month was over. Which prediction was likely to prove true, for Mr. Chetwynd did not seem to have any other interest in life than to gratify every wish the child expressed.
“She has taken complete possession of me,” he said to Mrs. Lanier, “and now my greatest happiness will be to make her happy. She is all I have, and I shall try to find in her the comfort her mother deprived me of.”