With his arm still round her shoulder, he pushed open the door of a large room on the right of the hall.
“Here she is, Alice!” he exclaimed, as his wife rose from a sofa near the fire.
“Why Anne, what have you done to yourself?”
The words were uttered in amazement. Anne had slipped off her heavy cloak, and stood laughing tremulously as she held her brother by both hands, and noticed for the first time that his hair was white, and his good-natured bronzed face lined and wrinkled. She turned from him to greet her sister-in-law.
The slim little creature she remembered was a stout matron, whose hair was just touched with grey.
Alice’s start of amazement as she gazed a moment before she kissed her, was almost comic.
“Why, Anne, my dear, you’ve grown quite a beautiful woman!” declared her brother, so simply that the tears sprang to Anne’s eyes.
“She’s grown younger, hasn’t she, Alice?” He looked at her with a puzzled expression.
Anne laughed, and touched her hair. “But it’s your white hair that—— And yet I don’t know. It’s you altogether! I never saw such a change. You—— She looks like a great lady in a French picture, doesn’t she, Alice? Court of one of the French kings. Louis the Sixteenth, that sort of thing.”
Anne laughed again. “My dear boy. You make me embarrassed. Don’t stare at me so,” she begged.