'She looks very well and very happy, Admiral.'
'She does, uncommonly, preposterously so.'
'She is scarcely our Cynthia now, I fear. She is what she was at seventeen, with a look in her eyes, a general indefinable air, that proves there is more of her elsewhere. I may say as much to you.'
'Good,' said the Admiral. 'My own impression precisely. Still we must not be carried away by the sentiment of the thing. We must be practical. He may be a pirate, you know. We must have his credentials, know who and what he is. And I shall not allow him to write me yet. We'll try whether Cynthy will cool down; nothing like tactics—sh! here she is!'
They both turned. Cynthia had just opened the door.
She looked radiantly lovely. The vestiges of the years intervening between childhood and womanhood that had chiefly been seamed by struggles to attain emotions such as came readily to other girls, and which she felt should, by duty, if not inclination, come to her, had vanished. Mrs. Hennifer, who alone knew what those struggles had been, and had marvelled at the simple and innocent earnestness with which she had striven to be like other girls, and to accept love and marriage as a matter of course, was alone able to realise the change in her. Before Cynthia went abroad it had become her opinion that she would not marry. She was convinced that she was more under the influence of Anthony Tremenheere than she knew, and also that he had now no hopes of winning her. She had looked jaded and perplexed sometimes, as though she understood neither others nor herself, but her general expression had been one of calm, amounting almost to exaltation. Without assuming any habits of unusual goodness, her air, manner, and actions had expressed a spirituality which was subtly diffusive, and seemed to rarify the moral atmosphere round her. Had she been a Roman Catholic, Mrs. Hennifer thought she would have found her vocation in a convent; but for her love of home and passionate attachment to old associations and familiar faces, and her strong sense of hereditary obligations as heiress and landowner, she might have become the brightest and blithest member of a Sisterhood. The groove of routine, the method of loving ministry uncharged by the responsibility of personal fervour, these seemed best adapted to her. Mrs. Hennifer ceased to imagine that any enthusiasm of feeling was in store for her. She would bless Lafer with her presence all her life, succeeding to the estates and dispensing hospitality and bounty to rich and poor; she would be happy in her loneliness, and in a certain dreaminess that would underlie all her practical energy and clear judgment; she would never feel the need of guidance and reliance on a stronger personality than her own; she would never long for a child, though loving all those with whom she came in contact; she would pass into ripe age and die. Much the same as this would be Anthony Tremenheere's lot; the two lives that might have been one, running apart, in parallel lines, held so by the forces of decorum and conventionality which Cynthia had forged, and then had vaguely and distrustfully chafed against as part of the perplexity of a life which was surely meant to be lucent to its depths.
And here she was a new creature, illumined by the stir of ardent emotions, yet shy in her sense of self-surrender and her hope of perfect joys.
She was wearing a dress of glistening tussore silk, and had delicate safrano roses at her throat and in her waist-band. Her golden hair, rolled back from her brow, was gathered in a loose knot low in her neck. Her face sparkled with animation, her large hazel eyes had lost none of their transparent sincerity. She had a habit of allowing her glance to travel round a room before it fell on the persons occupying it; thus recognition was with her illumination. As she came forward with a buoyant step the old-fashioned harmony of the room enhanced her charm. The white velvet carpet, the faded delicacy of century-old brocade, the soft wax-lights reflected on ormolu and crystal, at once softened and heightened her loveliness.
And now she looked from the Admiral to Mrs. Hennifer with a smile of artlessly perfect confidence. When she reached them she clasped her hands over his arm as he leant against the mantelpiece and kissed him.
'If I did not know conspirators were not necessarily traitors, I should be afraid of this tête-à-tête,' she said.