And Denzil was thinking:
"I hope the child will reproduce the type." He felt it would be some kind of satisfaction to himself if she should have a son which should be his own image.
"It is so strange," she remarked, "that you should be exactly like this Denzil, and yet resemble John who does not remind me of him at all, except in the general family look which every one of them share. This one might have been painted from you."
He looked down at her suddenly and he was unable to control the passionate emotion in his eyes. He was thinking that yes, certainly, the child must be like him—and then what message would it convey to her?
Amaryllis was disturbed, she longed to ask him what it was which she felt, and why there seemed some illusive remembrance always haunting her. She grew confused, and they passed on to another frame which contained the Lady Amaryllis who had had the sonnets written to her nut brown locks. She was a dainty creature in her stiff farthingale, but bore no likeness to the present mistress of Ardayre.
Denzil examined her for some seconds, and then he said reflectively:
"She is a Sweetheart—but she is not you!"
There was some tone of tenderness in his voice when he said the word "Sweetheart" and Amaryllis started and drew in her breath. It recalled something which had given her joy, a low murmur whispered in the night. "Sweetheart!"—a word which John, alas! had never used before nor since, except in that one letter in answer to her cry of exaltation—her glad Magnificat. What was this echo sounding in her ears? How like Denzil's voice was to John's—only a little deeper. Why, why should he have used that word "Sweetheart"?
No coherent thought had yet come to her, it was as though she had looked for an instant upon some scene which awakened a chord of memory, and then that the curtain had dropped before she could define it.
She grew agitated, and Denzil turning, saw that her face was pale, and her grey eyes vague and troubled.