"Not if you are interested in them. They cannot be unworthy."
"Oh, I am easily interested! I like strange people. I like to believe strange things. Your friend, Mrs. Mornington, will tell you that I am a foolish person."
"You have seen Mrs. Mornington lately?" questioned Allan.
"Yes; she was here yesterday afternoon. She is always bright and amusing, and I always feel particularly stupid in her society. She is always bright and amusing, and I always feel particularly stupid in her society. She talked of you, but I did not tell her I wanted to make your acquaintance. She would have offered to make a luncheon-party for me to meet you—or something dreadful of that kind."
"You have a great dislike to society, Mrs. Wornock?" he asked, keenly interested.
Her manner was so fresh and simple, almost childlike in its confiding candour, and her appearance was no less interesting than her manner. It is the fashion of our day for women of five and forty to look young, even to girlishness; but most women of five and forty are considerably indebted to modern art for that advantage. Here there was no art. The pale, clear fairness of the complexion owed nothing to the perfumer's palette. No poudre des fées blanched the delicate brow; no rose d'amour flushed the cheek; no eau de Medée brightened the large violet eyes. The lines which thought and sorrow had drawn upon the fair brow were undisguised, and in the soft, pale gold of the hair there were threads of silver. The youthfulness of the face was in its colouring and expression—the complexion so delicately fair, the countenance so trustful and pleading. It was the countenance of a woman to whom the conventionalities and jargon of modern life were unknown.
"You saw my son's portrait in the corridor?" said Mrs. Wornock.
"Yes. It struck my untutored eye as a very fine picture—almost as powerful as the Gladstone and the Salisbury, which I remember in the Millais collection at the Grosvenor."
"But as for the likeness to yourself, now—did that strike you as forcibly as it has struck other people?"
"I confess that as I stood in the hall I was inclined to exclaim, 'That is I or my brother!' But as I came nearer the picture I saw there was considerable diversity. To begin with, your son is much handsomer than I."