The word struck cold on Sally’s heart. What did one do with a lady? And a lady, too, who seemed hardly older than her son, and as wide-awake and sharp as you please, Sally was sure. She had been imagining Jocelyn’s mother old and stout and whitehaired, and perhaps not able to see or hear very well, and therefore comfortingly slow to mark what was done amiss. And here was this thin, quick, almost young lady. No flies on her for dead certain, thought Sally, clutching her wrap.
Her heart, which felt as if it had already sunk as far as it could go, contrived to sink still farther. She stared at Mrs. Luke with the fascinated fear of a rabbit confronted by a snake; but her stare, which felt inside just as ugly and scared as that, was outside the most beautiful little look of gracious shyness, and Mrs. Luke, staring back, was for a moment quite unable to speak.
Who was this? Had Jocelyn caught and married some marvellous daughter of a patrician house? Had he been up to Olympus, and netted the young Aphrodite as, on that morning of roses, she stepped ashore from her shell?
She flushed scarlet. The perfect grace and youth, the dream-like loveliness....
‘Why,’ she murmured under her breath, ‘how beautiful——’ and took a step forward, and held out both her hands.
‘Are you really my new daughter?’ she said in a low voice. ‘You?’
With a great effort Sally managed to stand her ground, and not shrink away backwards before this alarming figure. She didn’t know what to do about the held out hands, because if she let go of the wrap so as to shake them it would fall off, and Jocelyn had said she was on no account to let it do that.
She therefore stood motionless, and her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.
Mrs. Luke came close. ‘You wonderful child—you’re Salvatia?’ she murmured.
With a great effort Sally continued to hold her ground; with a great effort she unclove her tongue.