“That is easily told. I was your aunt's guest at the time she resolved to come abroad to see you and fetch you home. I used to hear all her plans about you, so that at last—I blush to own—I talked of Josephine as though she were my sister.”
“How strangely cold you were, then, when we met!” said she, quietly. “Was it that you found me so unlike what you expected?”
“Unlike, indeed!”
“Tell me how—tell me, I pray you, what you had pictured me.”
“It was not mere fancy I drew from. There was a miniature of you as a child at the cottage, and I have looked at it till I could recall every line of it.”
“Go on!” cried she, as he hesitated.
“The child's face was very serious,—actually grave for childhood,—and had something almost stern in its expression; and yet I see nothing of this in yours.”
“So that, like grandpapa,” said she, laughing, “you were disappointed in not finding me a young tiger from Bengal; but be patient, and remember how long it is since I left the jungle.”
Sportively as the words were uttered, her eyes flashed and her cheek colored, and Conyers saw for the first time how she resembled her portrait in infancy.
“Yes,” added she, as though answering what was passing in his mind, “you are thinking just like the sisters, 'What years and years it would take to discipline one of such a race!' I have heard that given as a reason for numberless inflictions. And now, all of a sudden, comes grandpapa to say, 'We love you so because you are one of us.' Can you understand this?”