"He says, you must summon all your smiles to greet him, love; for he hopes to be with us very, very shortly, so you will not wonder at my joy?"
Ellen tried to sympathize in it; but Mrs. Hamilton soon saw that her perhaps near dread of what should be her uncle's judgment on her brother and herself, prevented all pleasurable anticipation of his arrival, and that the only effectual way of removing it was to let them meet as soon as possible.
CHAPTER XIII.
FORGIVENESS.
Three days after Mr. Hamilton's arrival, a cheerful party assembled in his wife's dressing-room, which, in its elegant appurtenances—signs as they were, of a most refined and beautiful taste—certainly deserved a higher appellation; but boudoir, Percy had always declared, did not harmonize at all with the old English comforts of Oakwood, and he would not have a French word to designate his mother's room especially. Ellen was on her sofa working; Edward, who she thought had only returned that morning, at her side, reading; Caroline and Emmeline, drawing, the one with some degree of perseverance, the other with none at all. It seemed as if she could not sit still, and her wild sallies, and snatches of old songs, repeatedly made Miss Harcourt look up from her book, and Mrs. Hamilton from her work, surprised.
"Emmeline, I can not draw," exclaimed Caroline, at length; "you are making the table as restless as yourself."
"Why can you not say it was moved by an irresistible sympathy? It is most extraordinary that you will still speak plain matter-of-fact, when I am doing all I can to make you poetical."
"But what am I to poetize on now, Emmeline?—the table, or yourself? because, at present, they are the only subjects under consideration, and I really can not see any thing very poetical in either."
"Not even in me, Lina?" archly replied Emmeline, bending down so that her face should come before her sister, instead of her copy, which was a very pretty, small marble figure. "Now, if you were not the most determined piece of prose in the world, you would find poetry even in my face.