She paused for his name, but the little man was malicious, and would not give it. He nodded his head two or three times.
“Just so,” he said. “That is quite right,” smiling with a mischievous smile.
“Mr.—Markham,” Dolly said with a burst. “If that is not your right name, it is not my fault. How could Paul receive you as a brother? You must mean as—an uncle perhaps. Do you know that Paul is only just come of age, and Alice is but six months older than I?”
“Ah,” said Mr. Markham Gaveston, stroking his moustache. “I did not think of that,” and he looked at her with an expression half comic, half sad, slightly discomfited there could be no doubt. From this he shook himself free, however, and asked suddenly, “How old may Sir William be?”
“Sir William? Oh, quite old,” said Dolly. She gave a furtive glance at him this time, anxious to keep on the safe side, and making a calculation in her own mind how old this little brown gentleman himself could be. Fifty, sixty? these two ages were much the same to Dolly. There was not to her any appreciable difference in their extreme oldness and far-offness. Even forty was very old. Her mind wandered hazily, confused on these grey and misty heights. “He is not so old as papa,” she said with hesitation, “for papa, you know, was his tutor at college; but he is a great deal older than Lady Markham. He did not marry till he was about—I don’t quite know how much—about forty, I think I have heard people say,” said Dolly, with a certain awe in her voice.
“And that seems quite old to you?”
“It is old to be married, is it not? And Lady Markham was so beautiful, everybody says. She is beautiful still. I don’t know any one so lovely. I tell Alice often though I love her dearly, she is not half, oh, not a quarter so pretty as her mamma.”
“How does Alice like that? It will not please her much, I should think. I should not say that if I wanted her to like me.”
The disdain with which Dolly erected her small head, and looked at him!
“That only shows,” she said, “how little you know. Any girl would be a great deal more proud of her beautiful mamma than if she were ever so pretty herself. And Alice is very pretty. She has the sweetest eyes you ever saw. Quite blue like the sky—the deep sky. Not this little bit of no colour at all,” she said, pointing upwards to the hazy grey-blue of heat: “but the deep, deep sky—the blue-blue behind the clouds. Everything about her is pretty; but she is not so handsome, so beautiful, as Lady Markham. Being beautiful, and being pretty, are two different things.”