“I fear I have kept you waiting,” she said simply; “my father wished me to take you to see him, as—as I have seen you before—a new face makes him a little nervous sometimes—and I had one or two letters to finish for the post.”
Mr. Guildford looked at her as she spoke. Yes, there was the same fair, grave face, looking fairer and graver even from the effect of the heavy black mourning dress, the same quiet eyes looking straight up into his as she spoke, the same thick coils of hair with golden lights upon it now, as she stood with the evening sun full upon her. The same, yet different. She seemed older than when he had seen her before; he could almost have fancied his former impression of her girlishness of face and manner to have been mistaken. There was perfect self possession now in every tone and look. Mr. Guildford felt it to be in a sense infectious. He answered in the same matter-of-fact, business-like way.
“Thank you. I am quite ready to see Colonel Methvyn whenever it suits you. At the same time it is not of the least consequence to me if I wait a little. I arranged to return by a late train, as I was not able to come early.”
“I am glad of that. It was very considerate of you to arrange that your first visit should not be a hurried one,” said Miss Methvyn with the slightly formal courtesy of manner that Mr. Guildford began to understand as being habitual with her. Then turning to the young lady in the grey dress, who still stood with an air of half hesitation beside them, “Geneviève, are your letters ready? It is very nearly post time, dear.”
She spoke kindly, but with the tone of an older person to one many years younger. And there was a pretty air of half apology in the French girl’s reply.
“Oh! thank you. I go to finish them at once. It was only that I was not quite sure if monsieur,” with a glance in Mr. Guildford’s direction, “if this gentleman had been announced. I was going to seek you, my cousin.”
Cicely smiled. She fancied Geneviève had started up in affright, at finding herself tête-à-tête with the stranger. She knew that her cousin had been brought up very secludedly; perhaps, too, she unconsciously associated the idea of almost conventual restraint with every French girl’s education, and she was prepared to make full allowance for Geneviève’s inexperience, and timidity.
“You must let me introduce you to each other, I think,” said Miss Methvyn. “Geneviève, this is Mr. Guildford, who has kindly agreed to come all the way from Sothernbay to see my father in Dr. Farmer’s absence. My cousin, Miss Casalis,” she continued, turning to Mr. Guildford, “has come a very long way to see all of us. We intend to make her very fond of England to turn her into an Englishwoman, don’t we, Geneviève?”
Geneviève smiled sweetly, but rather sadly.
“You are very good for me, my cousin,” she said, “but one must love one’s country, one’s home—le foyer paternel,—above all when one has quitted them for the first time,” and she sighed gently.