“Come up to our sitting-room afterwards,” said mother, “for our mutual introductions.”
And so they did, and before I fell asleep that night I knew all about them, and had—I may as well confess it once for all—fallen over head and ears in love with the younger girl, Isabel!
Our guesses had been, as has been shown, correct so far as they went. The party of four were wonderfully “untravelled” for even those days. And the charm of novelty greatly enhanced their enjoyment of Weissbad and its neighbourhood. Mr Percy and his wife were thoroughly pleasant young people, and on further acquaintance, mother saw much in the latter that recalled her old friend.
But Isabel it is less easy to describe, and I will scarcely attempt to do so. To some extent her appearance, her very beauty, did her injustice, for it was difficult to believe that it could exist side by side with such complete unaffectedness and simplicity, such entire absence of vanity. She knew—she could not but know—that she was lovely, but she scarcely thought about it, herself in any way occupying a far smaller place in her thought than is the case with many a woman whose small claims on admiration one would imagine likely to beget humility and self-forgetfulness.
And the next day found Moore and myself most willing members of the excursion party to Oberwald. How well I remember it all! My shyness melted away like morning mist in the happy geniality of our companions, above all of Isabel. She was just enough older than I to make it natural that she should take a little the lead in some ways. She had seen more of society than I of course, quietly though they lived at home, and since her sister’s marriage, the fact of being in charge of her father’s house had given her a little air of importance which was quaint and pretty.
Before that pleasant day was over we had compared notes on almost every department of girl-life. I had confided to her my newly awakened feelings of dissatisfaction as to my want of feminine tastes and tendency to “tomboyishness,” and she on her side had told me that she was often afraid of growing too prim or narrow-minded in the well-arranged regularity of her own home-life.
“That was why,” she said, “I was so glad to travel a little. I feel as if I needed to rough it in some ways. Father is too careful of me, too unselfish. I am afraid I have always been a spoilt child, and having no brothers, you see, may make me selfish without knowing it!”
She looked up at me anxiously with her sweet brown eyes. What was it they reminded me of? I had already noticed that her people called her by some peculiar pet name; I had not caught it exactly.
“What is it that your sister and father call you sometimes?” I said. “Is it ‘Ella’?”
Isabel blushed a little.