"The most curious likeness!" she exclaimed. "Now, how is it that your face seems so familiar to me, I wonder? I've certainly never seen you anywhere before, and yet—and yet—who is it you remind me of, for goodness' sake?"
"I wish I could tell you," replied Austin, laughing. "Likenesses are often quite accidental, and it may be——"
"Stuff and nonsense, my dear," interrupted the old lady, brusquely. "There's nothing accidental about this. You're the living image of somebody, but who it is I can't for the life of me imagine. What do you say your name is?"
"My surname, you mean?—Trevor," replied Austin, beginning to be rather interested.
"Trevor!" cried Lady Merthyr Tydvil, her voice rising almost to a squeak. "No relation to Geoffrey Trevor who was in the 16th Lancers?"
"He was my father," said Austin, much surprised.
"Why, my dear, my dear, he was a great friend of mine!" exclaimed the old lady, raising both her hands. "I knew him twenty years ago and more, and was fonder of him than I ever let out to anybody. Of course it doesn't matter a bit now, but I always told him that if I'd been a single woman, and a quarter of a century younger, I'd have married him out of hand. That was a standing joke between us, for I was old enough to be his mother, and he was already engaged—ah, and a sweet pretty creature she was, too, and I don't wonder he fell in love with her. So you are Geoffrey's son! I can scarcely believe it, even now. But it's your mother you take after, not Geoffrey. She was a Miss—Miss——"
"Her maiden name was Waterfield," interpolated Austin.
"So it was, so it was!" assented the old lady, eagerly. "What a memory you've got, to be sure. One of Sir Philip Waterfield's daughters, down in Leicestershire. And her other name was Dorothea. Why, I remember it all now as though it had happened yesterday. Your father made me his confidante all through; such a state as he was in you never saw, wondering whether she'd have him, never able to screw up his courage to ask her, now all down in the dumps and the next day halfway up to the moon. Well, of course they were married at last, and then I somehow lost sight of them. They went abroad, I think, and when they came back they settled in some place on the other side of nowhere and I never saw them again. And you are their son Austin!"
Interested as he was in these reminiscences, Austin could not help being struck with the wonderful grace of this curious old lady's gestures. In spite of her skimpy dress and antiquated bonnet, she was, he thought, the most exquisitely-bred old woman he had ever seen. Every movement was a charm, and he watched her, as she spoke, with growing fascination and delight.