“And my child is the first one to welcome me!” said Alexander, sitting down on a sofa and drawing her upon his knee, where she sat, painfully embarrassed yet unwilling to move, lest she should wound his affection on this, the first day of his return.
“All are well?” he inquired.
“Quite well,” she answered.
“Ay, so the servant told me at the door. Where is my mother?”
“Just stepped from the room. I expect her back every instant.”
“Why, what a beautiful girl you are growing to be!” he said, looking down with earnest admiration at the long, black eye-lashes that, being cast down, shaded and softened the crimson cheeks.
“Come! look up at me; I wish to see if your eyes are changed. I never could decide whether they were gray or hazel. Let me see!” he said, putting his hand under her chin to lift her face.
She looked up with a quick and quickly withdrawn glance, and her cheeks deepened in their hue. She hated to sit on his knee, where years ago she had sat a hundred times, and she hated to hurt his feelings by leaving him; and she doubted whether she loved him now as well as she did then, and whether her love was not turning into something very much like distrust and dread; and she wondered why this should be so, and secretly blamed and disbelieved in herself.
“Am I so altered by travel that you don’t like to look at me?” he asked, smilingly.
“Oh no, sir, you are not altered, except to be—improved,” she forced herself to say, with courtesy.