“Yes, I remember now that Rose spoke of some distant family connection,” she said carelessly to Miss Merivale. “How very good of you to acknowledge it, dear Miss Merivale! Some people wouldn’t, I know. They think poor relations should be kept out of sight as much as possible. But Miss Sampson is hardly to be called a relation, is she? I forget the exact link between you, though Rose told me.”
“She is related to poor Cousin Lydia’s second husband,” Rose said, as Miss Merivale did not answer. “He and his little girl were lost in the bush, weren’t they, Aunt Lucy?”
“Yes, dear,” said Miss Merivale in a low voice. Her face had become very white.
“If she had lived, we might never have come to Woodcote,” Rose went on, her glance resting lovingly on the old house, which had just come into sight. “How strange it seems to think of that! How old was she, Aunt Lucy? It is only lately I have thought of her at all.”
“She was about two years old, dear,” Miss Merivale answered in the same low voice. Pauline, who was watching her in some wonder, could see that she was profoundly agitated.
“Then she would have been about twenty now,” Rose went on, not noticing her aunt’s disinclination to talk of her niece. “How old is Miss Sampson, Aunt Lucy? I wonder if they ever saw each other.”
“She is nearly twenty; I remember Clare telling me so,” said Pauline, answering for Miss Merivale. “But she looks much older. It is the kind of life she has lived, I suppose.”
Rose was intent on turning the curve of the drive in a masterly manner, and did not answer this. And Pauline, after another glance at Miss Merivale’s face, was silent about Rhoda. It was plain to her that, for some reason or another, the subject was intensely painful to Miss Merivale.
Rhoda came shyly across the hall as they entered. She had on a new brown dress that Miss Merivale had given her. It was brown cashmere, made very simply, but it was a prettier dress than Pauline had ever seen her wearing, and she stared undisguisedly at her as they shook hands.
“I hardly knew you, Miss Sampson,” she said. “How very well you are looking! But you must be having quite a holiday.”