And again she kissed the Eugenia she had not seen since her childhood.
Mrs Mildmay was very like Frances; correctly speaking, one should put it the other way, but as a new actor on the scene of this little story it is natural thus to express it. Her face had something indescribably childlike about it; her blue eyes were almost wistful, though the whole expression was bright and happy and very changeful. Yet there was plenty of 'character'—no dearth of good firm lines, with yet an entire absence of anything denoting hardness or obstinacy; the whole giving from the first candid glance an impression of extreme ingenuousness and single-mindedness.
'It is so good of you, meeting me like this,' the younger woman whispered, as she threw her arms round her old friend.
'You are not like your mother,' said Lady Myrtle, when the little group had made its way into the drawing-room where tea was already waiting. 'I knew you were not. Yet something in your voice recalls her. I suppose you can scarcely remember her,' she went on, 'not well enough to see the really marvellous resemblance between her and my child here—my child as well as yours?' and she smiled at Jacinth who was standing by, and laid her hand affectionately on the girl's arm.
'Oh yes,' Mrs Mildmay replied, 'I remember enough for that. And then I have one or two excellent portraits, besides the large one at Stannesley; at least my father always told me they were excellent. And even when Jassie was quite tiny, he saw the likeness and was delighted at it. But I—I am quite "Denison" I know, and so are Francie and Eugene. The odd thing is that Jassie is also in some ways more like the Mildmays than the two others.'
'I have never seen your husband, you know,' said Lady Myrtle. 'I can't say that the likeness to good Miss Alison Mildmay has ever struck me.'
The quaint way in which the old lady said it made them all smile a little—all, that is to say, except Jacinth. She had not altogether relished her mother's remark.
But that evening was a most happy one—perhaps the very happiest the two younger children had ever known—and one certainly to be marked with a white stone in the memory of all the five who spent it together. By a tacit agreement no uncertain or anxious questions were touched upon. Mrs Mildmay was able to give a good account of their father's health at the time of her leaving him, to the children, and made them all laugh by her account of her brother Marmaduke's description of the terrible formality of that first evening at Market Square Place. She seemed gifted with a wonderful amount of fun and merriment: Jacinth caught herself laughing after a fashion which was very rare with her.