“Why, here is the Park!” cried Sara, “actually the very house! Where, in all the world, did you get it? Have you been there? Do you know them? Why, I thought you were quite strangers to Chester! I never knew anything so odd. Who did it? It is frightfully bad, to be sure, but a staring likeness. Dear Mrs. Langham, where did you get this?”
“I got it out of an old book,” said I, with a guilty faltering which I could not quite conceal. “What Park is it? where is it? I do not know the place.”
But I am sure if ever anybody looked guilty and the possessor of an uncomfortable secret, it was me at that moment. I turned away from Sara, putting away that envelope with the certificates which Harry (how careless!) had also left on the table. I am sure she must have felt there was something odd in my voice.
“What Park? why, the Park, to be sure. Everybody in Chester knows the Park; and here is an inscription, I declare!” she cried, running with it to the window. “Oh, look here; do look here! It must have been some old lover of godmamma Sarah’s. I never saw anything so funny in my life. ‘Sarah as I saw her last.’ Oh, Mrs. Langham! do come and look at this comical, delightful thing! Isn’t it famous? She’s as old—as old as any one’s grandmother. Who could it be? who could it possibly be?”
“Did you say your godmother?” said I. This was another novel aggravation. Of course I had heard Sara speak of her godmothers; but, somehow, I had not identified them with the ladies who were expected to make her their heir.
But Sara was too much excited and delighted, and full of glee and ridicule, to answer me. She kept dancing about and clapping her hands over the drawing; always returning to it, and indulging in criticisms as free and as depreciatory as Harry’s had been. It was getting dark, and I confess I was very glad to sit down a little in the half light, and repose myself as well as I could while she was thus engaged and wanted no attention from me. Just then, however, I heard Harry’s foot coming upstairs, and, to my great wonder and almost alarm, somebody else entered with Harry. I could scarcely see him as I rose to receive my husband’s companion. Somebody else, however, saw him quicker than I did. In a moment Sara had dropped into the shadow of the curtains, and became perfectly silent. An inconceivable kind of sympathy with her (it could be nothing but mesmerism) somehow cleared up the twilight in a moment, and made me aware who the stranger was. It was Domenico’s master, Mr. Luigi, the Italian gentleman downstairs.
I cannot tell how the first preliminaries were got over. Of all times in the world to make acquaintance with anybody, think of the twilight, just before the candles came in, and when you could scarcely make out even the most familiar face! We got on somehow, however; we three—Sara sitting all the time dropt down, and nestling like a bird among the curtains, struck into the most unaccountable silence. I suppose she thought nobody saw her; whereas, on the contrary, Mr. Luigi, looking out of the darkness where he was sitting towards the window, saw the outline of her pretty head against a bit of green-blue sky as distinct as possible; and looked at it too, as I can testify.
When candles came at last (Mrs. Goldsworthy had a lamp; but it smoked, and the chimney broke, and all sorts of things happened to it), after the first dazzled moment we all looked at each other. Then Sara became clearly visible, and was forced out of her corner to let the blind be drawn down. She came forward to the light at once, with just the least bravado in her manner, ashamed of hiding herself. She had still the drawing in her hand.
“Mr. Langham,” said Sara, “do you know this wonderful drawing? I never was so amused and amazed in my life. Do you know it’s the Park? and my godmamma Sarah when she was a young lady and a great beauty. To think you should find it accidentally! And it must have been one of her old lovers who did it. Oh, please give it to me, and let me show it her. She would be pleased. She would soon find out whose it was.”
Here Mr. Luigi, who had taken up one of those old books of my father’s, which Harry in his carelessness had left upon the table, uttered a very brief instantly suppressed exclamation. I wonder what he could have discovered! It was the copy of Racine, which I have before mentioned as among papa’s books, on which was written the name of Sarah Mortimer. Sarah Mortimer! Here were we all strangers, or almost strangers, to each other, all apparently startled by the sound and sight of this name. What could the Italian have to do with Sarah Mortimer? she who broke poor papa’s heart, and whom we had found out so suddenly to-day?