“Is that Westbrooke girl at Schuyler Hill?”
“I believe so,” Julia replied, adding, as she saw the look of interest in Robert’s face: “I think she is a kind of companion for Mrs. Schuyler, and will, perhaps, be little Arthur’s governess. You know father educated her for a teacher?”
“I saw her last winter,” Rosamond Barton said; “and really, girls, she has the most beautiful face and form I ever looked at. Everything about her is perfect. You’ll have to paint her again, Mr. Macpherson. Your first picture does not do her justice now.”
Robert bowed, while Julia said, snappishly:
“Indeed, I am most anxious to behold this paragon. I have not seen her either for two years or more. She had a very red nose then.”
“Yes, but it came from a bad cold,” Emma quickly interposed, ready now as ever to defend the right; and then the conversation touching Gertie ceased, and a few moments after the whistle sounded, and the party had reached the Hampstead station.
They walked to the house, and Gertie watched them as they came up the avenue,—Tom, Rosamond and Emma, Robert Macpherson and Julia, and lastly Godfrey and Alice, he carrying her shawl and travelling satchel, and she looking up into his face in that matter of course, assured kind of way she had assumed since her engagement.
But Godfrey had other occupation than attending to her and her pretty coquetries. His eyes had travelled up the road, across the lawn to the broad piazza, and the young girl standing there, clothed in white, with the blue ribbons round her waist and the bright hair on her neck. And that he knew was Gertie; not much taller than when he saw her last, but grown and rounded into beautiful womanhood, which showed itself even at that distance, though not in all its fulness. That came to him when at last he stood with her hand in his looking into her upturned face and drinking in with every glance fresh draughts of her wondrous beauty, which so bewildered and intoxicated him that until Alice spoke to him twice and asked for her satchel he did not hear her. Then releasing Gertie’s hand, he turned to Alice and said:
“I beg your pardon. I did not know you were speaking to me.”
Then he kissed Edith, and tossed little Arthur in his arms, and shook his father’s hand, and greeted the servants with his old freedom and kindness of manner, while Gertie stood just where he left her, thinking how differently it had all happened from what she had expected.