“I have come to borrow some matches,” she said. “I find my box is empty. How pretty your room is! So is mine. It is a charming house altogether. May I sit down and talk to you a little? I want you and Miss Merivale to spend a long day with us next week. Do you think you could persuade her to come?”
The change in Pauline’s manner was so extraordinary that Rhoda found it difficult to speak. But Pauline did not appear to notice her constrained answer. She sat down in the low chair by the window and took up the photograph frame that stood there by Rhoda’s little writing case and a saucer filled with white violets and moss.
“May I look at this? It is your aunt and cousins, isn’t it? What a dear little fellow that is on your aunt’s lap! Is that the little boy who was ill? You took him into the country, didn’t you?”
An irrepressible glimmer of fun came into Rhoda’s dark eyes. “Yes, into Essex,” she said demurely.
“They have all gone into the country now, haven’t they? How fortunate it was that Miss Merivale heard me mention you, Miss Sampson! She noticed the name at once. It is quite certain, isn’t it, that you are related to her through her sister’s marriage?”
“Miss Merivale insists on thinking so,” said Rhoda quietly. “But I cannot be sure of it.”
“Don’t you remember your own people at all? I can feel for you, if that is so. My father and mother died while I was a baby. Can you remember your mother? I wish I could.”
“No, I cannot remember her.”
“And your father?”
“Just a little.”