Unconsciously the young people, including Jessica Hunt, had huddled close together, solemnly drinking their tea but having little to say to one another.
Finally a cold voice made the five of them jump and Jean was barely able to suppress a giggle. “Donald,” Madame Van Mater said, “bring the girl, whom you tell me you met in the West and who bears so strange a resemblance to your mother, closer to me. I think all resemblances are ridiculous and yet you have made me curious.”
Why on earth should Olive be made the center of all eyes when of all things she most hated it, and yet what else was there for her to do in this instance but to arise and allow Donald to lead her across the room to his aunt? Donald’s eyes begged forgiveness for the old woman’s peremptory manner, and yet he showed no sign of disobedience.
“Turn on the electric light,” Madame Van Mater ordered, for the dusk was creeping into the big room. And under the light, facing her hostess, Olive waited with Mrs. Harmon only a few feet away.
It was unlike this shy, delicate girl on meeting with strangers even to raise her eyes to theirs, and yet she now stared straight at Madame Van Mater with a gaze as fixed and direct as hers and almost as searching and haughty. For Olive’s emotion was immediately one of the deepest antagonism toward this woman, however old she might be, who summoned her as a queen might summon a subject.
Beginning at the girl’s feet, Madame Van Mater surveyed her slowly through a pair of gold-rimmed lorgnettes, her eyes, of course, resting longest on Olive’s face. And was the sigh she drew one of relief as she turned again to Donald and to Mrs. Harmon? “I do not see the least likeness in this girl to any member of my family,” she announced. “Whatever her name may be, her appearance is quite foreign and I should prefer never to have the subject of this resemblance mentioned again.” And nodding her head, the old lady apparently dismissed Olive to her seat.
But Miss Winthrop caught at her pupil’s hand as she passed her drawing her down toward her. “Let me look at you, Olive,” she murmured. “I had not heard of this fancy of Donald’s, but it has seemed to me that I have seen some one a little like you somewhere, I fancied in some old picture.” Then smiling she shook her head. “No, Donald, I can’t say I see any likeness to your mother, and yet, after all, perhaps there is enough of a suggestion of her for you not to be altogether snubbed.”
And now at last Olive was permitted to return to her chair, where she sat down pretending to look out of the window, though all the time she was feeling hot and rebellious at the scene in which she had just been compelled to play an unwilling part. Why, because she was so uncertain of her ancestry, should she be forced to go through these moments that made the fact more bitterly painful to her?
Donald guessed at Olive’s feelings, for though the ranch girls had tried their best to keep her story from the ears of the Harmons during their stay at Rainbow Lodge, a part of it Donald, his sister and mother had learned through Aunt Ellen, through the cowboys on the ranch and through one or two of their closest neighbors. And for this reason the young fellow was perhaps even more interested in this half Indian girl. Now he wished very much to help her escape from the unpleasant situation into which his own idle talk had led her.
Donald turned to Jean and Jessica Hunt. “I wonder if you and Miss Ralston would care to come and look over the old house with me?” he asked “It is so old that it is quite worth seeing and I am sure that Elizabeth will excuse us.”