“She does not look like him; she must resemble her mother; but she has hair and eyes like——” was madam’s inward comment, but which was broken short off at this point with a regretful sigh.
But the next moment she had turned to him again with her usual graciousness.
“Mr. Dalton,” she said, “I have been telling your daughter how disappointed I was to find her gone so suddenly from Newport. I had only just become acquainted with her, to be sure, but I had promised myself much pleasure in my intercourse with her.”
Mr. Dalton bowed and smiled, and mechanically repeated something stereotyped about “mutual pleasure,” &c., and then turned to be presented to Mr. Gustave Sylvester, but not before madam had noticed again that steel-like glitter in his eyes.
“My dear,” she said to Editha, “I have not yet asked you where you are stopping?”
“At the Grand Union.”
“That is capital, for we have all secured rooms there also, and I hope we shall see much of each other.”
“I hope so, too,” Editha said, heartily, and thinking how all her life she had longed for just such a friend as she thought madam would be.
“How long do you remain?” she asked.
“I am sure I cannot tell. As long as papa desires, I suppose, as I make my plans conform to his as much as possible,” and Editha cast an anxious glance at Mr. Dalton, whose strange manner she had remarked; and was somewhat troubled by it. He was sustaining rather a forced conversation with Mr. Gustave Sylvester, but his manner was nervous and his brow gloomy and lowering.