The girl looked and shook her head:
“Like her father a little,” she said, “but no one else I can think of.”
“No, not her father. Some one you know intimately and see often—very often, if you’re as vain as you ought to be.”
“Who?” she demanded, frowning and looking puzzled; “I can’t think whom you mean.”
“Yourself; she looks like you.”
Mariposa gave a quick look at the girl and then at Essex. For the moment she thought he was mocking her, but with her second look at the box, the likeness suddenly struck her.
“She is,” she said slowly, reaching for the glass; “yes,” putting it down, “I see it—she is. How funny! and fancy your telling me on top of the statement that she was so ugly! I don’t see how I can smile again this evening.”
She smiled with the words on her lips, the charming smile of a woman who knows her silliest phrases are delightful to one man at least.
“I’m not entirely like her?” she asked, with a somewhat anxious air; “I haven’t got those pale-gray, prominent eyes, have I?”
“No, you’ve got mysterious dark eyes, as deep as wells, and when I look into them, down, down, I sometimes wonder if I can see your heart at the bottom. Can I? Let me see.”