“Oh, Lettice, don’t say that to him,” interrupted Nina. “It is the not having been here that has been the cruellest of all to him, and he has not been selfish about it. Still, Arthur, you shouldn’t say anything to hurt Lettice;” for Nina was always assailed at her weakest point, by any approach to “appeal” on the part of her elder sister.
“I am very sorry. I didn’t mean it. That’s a stupid thing to say, but it’s true,” said Arthur penitently.
“And I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean what it sounded like,” said Lettice. “I know it has been worse for you than for any of us,” she went on, looking up in Arthur’s face with her tearful eyes.
Lettice was one of the few people in the world who seldom show to greater advantage than when in tears. Her eyes were not so fine as Nina’s and Arthur’s soft brown ones; they were grey—good, sensible, “well-opened” eyes, but in a general way with a want of depth and tenderness in them. And this want the tears supplied. Her recent sorrow, too, had, as it were, etherealised and softened her whole face and its expression, whose real beauty was often marred by a certain hardness which seemed to render square and angular the outlines intended by nature to be curved and graceful. The thought struck Nina as her glance fell upon her.
“How very sweet and lovely Lettice looks just at this moment.”
And the thought, though not in quite the same form, struck another person who just at that moment entered the room.
He had never seen her before.
“What a lovely girl! Can that be Lettice? I have always heard that Nina was the beauty, but this girl is too dark to be Nina,” were the reflections that rushed through his mind in far less time than it takes to tell them. And in a moment his ideas were confirmed, for another girl, whose face had been completely hidden, turned at the slight sound of his approach, and by her exceedingly fair hair and complexion he recognised the Nina who had been described to him. But his eyes turned quickly from her to her sister.
“I beg your pardon a thousand times,” he said, his own face colouring a little as he spoke.
“I rang, but as no one answered, and as the front door was open, I ventured to come in. You know who I am,”—for all the three young people had started to their feet, too surprised as yet to find their voices. “I am Godfrey—Godfrey Auriol, your cousin, I hope I may call myself.”