Rupert, to whom the well-known volubility of his aunt was most particularly disagreeable, but who had nevertheless saluted the stalwart old lady's cheek with much affection, here bent his supple back with a sort of mocking gallantry.
"You maintain your device, permit me to say, my dear aunt, as ostentatiously in your person as we renegade Landales ourselves."
"Pooh, pooh! I am too old a bird to be caught by such chaff, nephew; it is pearls before.... I mean it is too late in the day, my dear. Keep it for the young things. And indeed I see the sheep's eyes you have been casting in their direction. Come nearer, young ladies, and make your cousin's acquaintance," beckoning to her nieces, who, arrayed in warm travelling pelisses and beaver bonnets of fashionable appearance, stood in the background near the fireplace.
"They are very like, are they not?" she continued. "Twins always are; as like as two peas. And yet these are as different as day and night when you come to know them. Madeleine is the eldest; that is she in the beaver fur; Molly prefers bear. Without their bonnets you will distinguish them by their complexion. Molly has raven hair (she is the truest O'Donoghue), whilst Madeleine is fair, blonde, like her Breton father."
The sisters greeted their new-found guardian, each in her own way. And, in spite of the disguising bonnets and their surprising similarity of voice, height, and build, the difference was more marked than that of beaver and bear.
Madeleine acknowledged her kinsman's greeting with a dainty curtsey and little half-shy smile, marked by that air of distinction and breeding which was her peculiar characteristic. Molly, however, who thought she had reasonable cause for feeling generally exasperated, and who did not see in Mr. Rupert Landale, despite his good looks and his good manner, a very promising substitute for her Bath admirers (nor in the prospect of Pulwick a profitable exchange for Bath), came forward with her bolder grace to flounce him a saucy "reverence," measuring him the while with a certain air of mockery which his thin-skinned susceptibility was quick to seize.
He looked back at her down the long tunnel of her bonnet, appraising the bloom and beauty within with cold and curious gaze, and then he turned to Madeleine and made to her his courteous speech of welcome.
This was sufficient for Miss Molly, who, for six months already accustomed to compel admiration at first sight from all specimens of the male sex that came across her path, instantly vowed a deadly hatred to her cousin, and followed the party into the Landale family coach—Rupert preceding, with a lady on each arm—in a temper as black as her own locks.
It fell to her lot to sit beside the objectionable relative on the back seat, while, by the right of her minute's seniority, Madeleine sat beside Tanty in the front. The projecting wings of her headgear effectively prevented her from watching his demeanour, unless, indeed, she had turned to him, which was, of course, out of the question; but certain fugitive conscious blushes upon the young face in front of her, certain castings down of long lashes and timid upward glances, made Molly shrewdly conjecture that Mr. Landale, through all the apparent devotion with which he listened to Tanty's continuous flow of observations, was able to bestow a certain amount of attention upon her pretty neighbour.
Tanty herself conducted the conversation with her usual high hand, feigning utter oblivion of the thundercloud on Molly's countenance; and, if somewhat rambling in her discourse, nevertheless contriving to plant her points where she chose.