‘It is very strange,’ the girl said half to herself; ‘but I surely know some face like yours. Ah! could it be that?’ She stopped, and her face flushed up to her hair.
‘Could it be what, dear?’
Then Kate laughed out—the softest, most musical, tender little laugh that ever came from her lips. ‘I know,’ she said—‘it is myself!’
Mrs. Anderson blushed, too, with sudden pleasure. It was a positive happiness to her, penetrating beneath all her little proprieties and pretensions. She took the girl’s hands, and bending forward, looked at her in the face; and it was true—they were as like as if they had been mother and daughter—though the elder had toned down, and lost that glory of complexion, that brightness of intelligence; and the younger was brighter, quicker, more intelligent than her predecessor had ever been. This made at once the sweetest, most pleasant link between them; it bound them together by Nature’s warm and visible bond. They were both proud of this tie, which could be seen in their faces, which they could not throw off nor cast away.
But after the ferry was crossed—when they were drawing near Shanklin—a silence fell upon both. Kate, with a quite new-born timidity, was shy of inquiring about her cousin; and Mrs. Anderson was too doubtful of Ombra’s mood to say more of her than she could help. She longed to be able to say, ‘Ombra will be sure to meet us,’ but did not dare. And Ombra did not meet them; she was not to be seen, even, as they walked up to the house. It was a pretty cottage, embowered in luxuriant leafage, just under the shelter of the cliff, and looking out over its own lawn, and a thread of quiet road, and the slopes of the Undercliff, upon the distant sea. There was, however, no one at the door, no one at any of the windows, no trace that they were expected, and Mrs. Anderson’s heart was wrung by the sight. Naturally she grew at once more prodigal of her welcomes and caresses. ‘How glad I am to see you here, my darling Kate! This is your home, dear child. As long as I live, whenever you may want it, my humble house will be yours from this day—always remember that; and welcome, my darling,—welcome home!’
Kate accepted the kisses, but her thoughts were far away. Where was the other who should have given her a welcome too? All the girl’s eager soul rushed upon this new track. Did Ombra object to her?—why was not she here? Ombra’s mother, though she said nothing, had given many anxious glances round her, which were not lost upon Kate’s keen perceptions? Could Ombra object to the intruder? After all her aunt’s effusions, this was a new idea to Kate.
The door was thrown open by a little woman in a curious headdress, made out of a coloured handkerchief, whose appearance filled Kate with amazement, and whose burst of greeting she could not for the first moment understand. Kate’s eyes went over her shoulder to a commonplace English housemaid behind with a sense of relief. ‘Oh! how the young lady is welcome!’ cried old Francesca. ‘How she is as the light to our eyes!—and how like our padrona—how like! Come in—come in; your chamber is ready, little angel. Oh! how bella, bella our lady must have been at that age!’
‘Hush, Francesca; do not put nonsense into the child’s head,’ said Mrs. Anderson, still looking anxiously round.
‘I judge from what I see,’ said the old woman; and then she added, in answer to a question from her mistress’s eyes, ‘Meess Ombra has the bad head again. It was I that made her put herself to bed. I made the room dark, and gave her the tea, as madam herself does it, otherwise she would be here to kiss this new angel, and bid her the welcome. Come in, come in, carissima; come up, I will show you the chamber. Ah! our signorina has not been able to keep still when she heard you, though she has the bad head, the very bad head.’
And then there appeared to Kate, coming downstairs, the slight figure of a girl in a black dress—a girl whom, at the first moment, she thought younger than herself. Ombra was not at all like her mother—she was like her name, a shadowy creature, with no light about her—not even in the doubtful face, pale and fair, which her cousin gazed upon so curiously. She said nothing till she had come up to them, and did not quicken her pace in the least, though they were all gazing at her. To fill up this pause, Mrs. Anderson, who was a great deal more energetic and more impressionable than her daughter, rushed to her across the little hall.