In Reinette’s mind Mr. Beresford had always seemed a gray-haired, middle-aged man, as old or older than her father, and she had no idea that this young, good-looking stranger, with the handsome teeth and pleasant smile and voice, was he; so she withheld her hand from his offered one, and stepping back a little, said in perfect English, but with a very pretty foreign accent:
“I am looking for Mr. Beresford, please; do you know him?—is he here?”
It was such a sweet, musical voice, and had in it something so timid and appealing that Mr. Beresford felt his pulses quicken as they had never done before.
“I am Mr. Beresford,” he replied, and the lightning glance which the bright eyes flashed into his face almost blinded him, for Reinette’s eyes were wonderful for their brilliancy and continually varying expression, and few men ever stood unmoved before them.
“Mr. Arthur Beresford? Are you Mr. Arthur, father’s friend?” she asked:
“Yes, Mr. Arthur, your father’s friend,” and again his hand was extended toward her.
Reinette had kept up her composure ever since the moment when she knew her father was dead, and had even tried to seem cheerful on the train and had talked of the places they were passing to some people who had been on the Russia with her, and were on their way to their home in Boston, but at sight of Mr. Beresford, her father’s friend, whom she was to trust with everything, her forced calmness gave way, and she broke down entirely. Taking both his hands in hers, she bent her face over them and sobbed like a little child.
It was a very novel position in which the grave bachelor Beresford found himself—a girl crying on his hands, with all those people looking on; and still he rather liked it, for there was something very touching in the way those fingers clung to his, and in his confusion he was not quite sure that he did not press them a little, but before he could think what to say or do Grandma Ferguson stood close to him, and as Reinette lifted her head a pair of arms was thrown around her neck, and a voice which her patrician ears detected at once as untrained and uneducated, exclaimed:
“My dear Rennet, I am so glad to see my daughter’s girl.”
With a motion as swift and graceful as the motions of a kitten, Reinette freed herself from the smothering embrace, and the eyes, in which the tears were still shining, blazed with astonishment and indignation at the liberty taken by this strange woman, whose tout ensemble she took in at a glance, and who said again, “My dear child, I am so sorry for you.”