There was, however, no lack of excitement when the rest of the family came in. The girls dazzled with the quick transition from the darkness outside to the light within, their eyes shining, their lips apart with breathless curiosity and excitement, and a thrill of interest which might have satisfied the requirements of any visitor; and after a little interval their father, pale, and somewhat breathless, too, whose expectation was not of anything agreeable, but rather of some new misfortune, of which perhaps his cousin had come to tell him. Edward Penton did not pause to think that it was very unlikely that Alicia would thus break in upon his retirement in order to tell him of some misfortune. The feeling was instinctive in his mind, because of long acquaintance with defeat and failure, that every new thing must mean further trouble. He was always ready to encounter that in his depressed way. He came into the atmosphere which was tinged with the smell of paraffin, the discomfort of which was habitual to him, added to the undercurrent of irritation in his mind, and with the feeling that there was already a crowd of people in the room, where probably no one was necessary but himself. Alicia Penton had long, long ceased to be an object of special interest to him; nobody now was of particular interest to Mr. Penton in that or any sentimental way. The people who were about him now either belonged to him, in which case they gave him a great deal of altogether inevitable trouble; or else they did not belong to him, and were probably more or less antagonistic—wanting things from him, entertainment, hospitality, subscriptions, something or other which he did not wish to give. Such were the two classes into which the human race was divided; but if there was a debatable ground between the two, a scrap of soil upon which a human foot could be planted. Sir Walter and his daughter were its possible inhabitants. They belonged to him, too—in a way; they were antagonistic, too—in a way. Both the other halves of the world were more or less united in them.
He came forward into the light, which, however, revealed his knickerbockers and muddy boots more distinctly than his face. “It is a long time,” he said, “since we have met.”
“Yes, Edward, it is a long time; I have been saying so to your wife. The girls have grown up since I saw them last; they were little girls then, and now they are—grown up—”
When emotion reaches a high strain and becomes impassioned the power of expression is increased, and eloquence comes; but on the lower levels of feeling, suppressed excitement and commotion of mind often find utterance in the merest commonplace.
“Yes, they are grown up—the boy, too,” said Mr. Penton, under the same spell.
She cast a glance upward to where, beyond the lamp, on his mother’s side of the table, Wat appeared, a lengthy shadow, perhaps the most uncongenial of all. She made a slight forward inclination of her head in recognition of his presence, but no more. The girls she had shown a certain pleasure in. They stood together, with that pretty look of being but one which a pair of sisters often have, so brightly curious and excited, scanning her with such eager eyes that it would have been difficult not to respond to their frank interest. But Mrs. Penton could not tolerate Wat; his very presence was an offense to her, and the instinctive way in which he went over to his mother’s side, and stood there in the gloom looking at the visitor over the shade of the lamp. She would have none of him, but she turned with relief to the girls.
“I am ashamed to ask the question,” she said, “but which of you is my godchild? You seem about the same age.”
It was a vexation that it should be the other one—the one who was like her mother, not the impetuous darker girl whose eyes devoured the great lady who was her cousin—who replied, “It is I who am Ally. There is only a year between us. We are more together than any of the others.”
“Ally?” said Mrs. Russell Penton, with a little scorn. “And what is your name?”
“I am Anne.”