“I am glad to see your face and hear your voice once more, Edith,” he said seriously. “I have many a time longed for both.”
“Dear Carl!” she exclaimed. “But what is that I hear? Is it a parrot?”
Carl laughed. “Hush! It is Miss Clinton. She is calling out to know who has come. We will go in and see her.”
Miss Clinton had one pleasant expression, and that was a smile, when she was so delighted by something out of herself as to forget herself.
This smile brightened her face as she watched the young couple approach her, hand in hand. She leaned back in her chair, and contemplated Edith, without thinking of returning her greeting.
“I’m sure that is a golden silence,” Carl said, laughing. “But what do you think of her, aunt? She likes to have people speak first, and look afterward.”
“You are welcome, dear!” the old lady said softly, and extended her hand, but without leaning forward. To take it, therefore, Edith had to come very near, and was drawn gently down to the footstool by Miss Clinton’s chair.
The old lady took off the girl’s hat, and dropped it on to the carpet, then studied her face with delight. She loosened one of the braids of hair wound around her head, and held it out to a sunbeam to see the sparkle of it. She pushed it back from the face. “Did you ever see such ears?” she said to Carl. “They are rose-leaves! There must be a large pearl hung in each. She drew her finger along the smooth curve of the brows. “A great artist and physiognomist once told me that such brows show a fine nature. Broken brows, he said, indicate eccentricities of character, brows bent toward the nose a tyrannical disposition, heavy brows reserve and silence, but this long, smooth brow versatility and grace. Read Lavater if you want to know all about eyebrows.” She took the cheek, now glowing with blushes, in the hollow of her hand, and held the eyelids down to admire the lashes. “They make the eyes look three shades darker than they really are. But what color are the eyes? They are no color. Did you ever see a shaded forest spring, Carl? These eyes are as limpid.”
“Oh! please don’t!” the girl begged, trying to hide her face.
“My dear, I shall call you Eugénie, and shall adore you,” Miss Clinton continued. “I hope they have not told you horrible stories about me, or that, if they have, you will not believe them. People are fond of saying that I am sharp, but I quote Victor Hugo to them, ‘La rose du Bengale, pour être sans épines, est aussi sans parfum.’ A character without any sharpness would be like an ocean without salt. Temper sweetens. When any person is recommended to me as of a very mild and placid position, never getting angry, I always say, Keep that person out of my sight! Yes, I shall call you Eugénie. I dislike the Edith on account of old Mrs. Yorke. She and I always quarrelled, dear. We were what some one has called ‘intimate enemies.’ But I don’t mean to quarrel with her grand-daughter. You have your father’s eyes and hair, Eugénie, but your mother’s features. I hope you have not her disposition. She was too positive, and, besides, she ran away with another woman’s beau.”