“I should be so sorry to have kept anybody waiting,” he began, in shy comment upon the discovery that he was eating alone.
She laughed at him with cordial frankness. “Waiting?” she echoed merrily. “Why, it’s about three o’clock. Lord Julius is nearly in London by this time, and the rest of us have not only breakfasted, but lunched.”
“Lord Julius gone?” he asked with wide-open eyes.
She nodded, and raised a reassuring hand. “It’s nothing but business. Telegrams came early this morning which took him away by the first train. He would have gone later in the day in any case. He left the most fatherly adieux for you—and of course you’ll be seeing him soon in London.”
Christian was puzzled. “But this is his home here, is it not?” he asked.
“Not at all—more’s the pity,” she replied. “We wish for nothing so much as that he might make it so—but he elects instead to be the slave of the family, and to work like a bank-clerk in Brighton instead of cutting himself free and living his own life like the rest of us, in God’s fresh air. But he comes often to us—whenever the rural mood seizes him.” She seemed to comprehend the doubtful expression on the youth’s face, for she added smilingly: “And you mustn’t be frightened to be left alone with us. You’re as much our blood as you are his—and—”
“Oh, don’t think that!” he pleaded impulsively. “I was never so glad to be anywhere in my life as I am to be here.”
Her gray eyes regarded him with kindly softness. He saw that they were only in part gray eyes—that they were both blues and browns in their beautiful coloring, and that the outer edge of the iris deepened in tint almost to the black of the splendid lashes. He returned her look, and held it with a tentative smile, that he might the longer observe the remarkable eyes. All at once it flashed upon him that there was a resemblance.
“Your eyes are like my mother’s,” he said, as if in defensive explanation of his scrutiny.
“Tell me about your mother,” she rejoined, putting her arms on the table and resting her chin upon a finger. “I do not think I ever heard her name.”