"Is it really so much like me?" she asked.
"Your image! I should have recognized it anywhere!" pronounced the widow, following up the good impression she had made.
"Well, my daughter was always said to resemble me; but really, now, Mrs. Merivale, you must have recognized Beatrix. You flatter me too much," simpered Mrs. Gordon.
Mrs. Merivale's false smiles and grimaces gave way for once to an expression of honest surprise.
"Do you mean to tell me that it isn't your portrait—taken when you were, perhaps, a little younger?" she asked.
"No, it is not mine. Do you not recognize my daughter, Mrs. Merivale? It is Beatrix herself."
"Beatrix!"
Mrs. Merivale gazed bewildered at the fair young pictured face. The soft blue eyes smiled into hers, the pale-gold hair waved softly over the low, white brow, the face had a fair, refined loveliness all its own, but it was not the face she recalled as that of Beatrix Gordon. There flashed before her mind's eye a face bright and soft like a tropic flower, lighted by dark, starlike eyes, crowned by grand tresses of dusky, burnished gold—a face before whose rare and witching beauty this other one paled like a flower before a star.
She looked at Mrs. Gordon, surprise and bewilderment on her face, her turquois-blue eyes open to their widest.
"Are you jesting?" she said. "Or have you another daughter? You do not really wish me to believe that this is Beatrix?"