"I'm eager for it," she replied.
At the door Hamlen managed to have a word alone with Huntington.
"You knew her mother when she was a girl, you said?"
"Yes;—slightly," was the guarded reply.
"She was wonderful!" he exclaimed with much feeling. Then he added, "The daughter is very like her, don't you think?"
XIII
Hamlen's remark remained in Huntington's mind long after it was spoken. He himself had been impressed by Merry's resemblance to her mother as they set out on their afternoon's pilgrimage; yet his reply to Hamlen's question was a prompt denial. Huntington's mind centered itself upon this paradox as they walked down the long driveway, and he wondered why he had impulsively yet deliberately given an impression so at variance with what he knew to be the facts. Seeking for self-justification, he turned his head slightly so that he might inspect his companion more closely without attracting her attention. After all, he satisfied himself, the resemblance was occasioned more by certain intangible characteristics than by any similarity of features. Marian Seymour possessed a beauty of more startling type than her daughter; indeed, until that afternoon Huntington had thought of Merry as an attractive rather than a beautiful girl. Now that the subject forced itself upon him he realized she was both, and that the type proved so satisfying that he had been content to enjoy it without the temptation of analysis.
Huntington's further acquaintance with the daughter emphasized his disapproval of her mother's idea regarding her possible marriage to Hamlen, and this led him to make a comparison between Marian Seymour as she was to-day and the idealization with which he had been so long familiar. Her beauty still remained, her fascination was perhaps greater since experience had given substance to her girlish vivacity and charm, and her energy was such that she unconsciously dominated every situation of which she was a factor. She was evidently devoted to her husband and to her children, but her force of personality dominated them as it did all others with whom she came in contact. Huntington had rather admired this trait in a woman, but now it clashed with his own judgment. He gave her credit for believing that she would be acting in her daughter's interest, but her suggestion did shock him, for it seemed to show a lack of sympathetic understanding. The idea of Merry married to Philip Hamlen! The man was all right, in his way, of course. Eventually he might become less of the recluse and more nearly human; but obviously he was too old and too settled in his eccentricities to be inflicted on any woman, and least of all on a girl like this.