“Yes,” she exclaimed, “you are Mr Wynyard, and I—you must remember me?—I am your Maud’s old friend—Geraldine Terence—now Geraldine Fitzmaurice.”
Chapter Two.
An Embryo Novelist.
So it was. A minute or two’s conversation sufficed to establish for each the other’s identity, and to gather up the loosened threads of former acquaintanceship. Worse than loosened indeed, for mother’s face grew sad when Mr Wynyard told her of the death of her old friend, Maud, his wife, which had occurred several years previously.
“I had no idea of it,” she said. “We were so much abroad for some years that many changes may have taken place without my hearing of them. And curiously enough, I have been thinking of her—of your wife, Mr Wynyard, quite specially of late.”
“Don’t you find that that is often the case?” was the reply. “When some old link is about to be renewed, one has a sort of foreshadowing of it. Was it possibly,” he added with a little hesitation, “the involuntary association of some likeness to her in either of my daughters, if you have happened to notice them?”
“Who could help doing so?” said mother in her pretty, gracious manner. “But no,” she went on, “I don’t think it was that! It was even before your arrival here that I was thinking of Maud. When I know them better I shall probably see some likeness in your daughters, but it has not struck me.”
“We think Margaret the most like her,” said the father. “Margaret is Mrs Percy—she and her husband are travelling with us,” and he nodded his head in the direction of his own party. “But your supper will be getting cold—”