Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/418

406 each other's past life — whose intercourse has consisted in the exchange of brief and formal letters, and who have had, so far, nothing in common but the interest and the affection born of a sense of duty — must needs be attended with more or less of restraint and embarrassment; but Mr. Cunningham's anxiety lest the first greetings should partake of the nature of a scene was at once dispelled by the tact and good taste of his daughter; even the dust and fatigue of the journey could not do much to impair the charm of her appearance; and as she stepped out of the carriage at the roadside station, whither he had gone to meet her, as already described, her father found her even more graceful and beautiful than the forerunning accounts had led him to expect; and as Olivia, putting her arms round his neck, and kissing him, said, "So here we are at last! it has been such a long journey;" and then, turning to her maid who was alighting from the carriage behind, added, "Justine, this is my papa, who has come all this way to meet us," — Cunningham felt that the scene of which he had been in dread had been escaped. And when, soon after they had started in the camel-carriage for the last stage of her long journey, Olivia took his hand fondly, and leaning on his shoulder, said, "Papa, you look so young, it must seem quite odd to have a great big daughter like me," — her father, responding warmly to the embrace, began to feel that it was not so dreadful a thing- to have his daughter back after all. Arrived at Mustaphabad, Olivia expressed herself as delighted with the residency and all about it. The apartments which her aunt had at Florence were very large and fine, but they were nothing like the reception-rooms at the residency — while her own rooms were charming; every want and comfort had been thought of and provided, and her father was able to say with satisfaction that all this had been newly arranged for her especial benefit. She was equally pleased with the gardens; the leaves in midwinter, the multitude of squirrels and strange birds, even the familiar crows hopping about the edge of society with a view to pick up the stray crumbs left at the early breakfast taken in the veranda — all these novelties appeared full of interest for her, and her father experienced a sense of deep relief to find that his fears had been groundless lest she should prove to be a fine lady, spoilt for Indian life by foreign travel. A silent man him self, and restrained from expressing much interest in her former life by a sense of indignation at what he considered his sister's misalliance, his shyness was soon dissipated by his daughter's sympathetic ways as she thus rapidly identified herself with his interests and her new home. The commissioner soon found that the cheerful breakfast-table with his daughter opposite to him was a great improvement on the solitary meal, dawdled over with a book, to which he had been accustomed; still more when on his proposing to retire into another room before lighting his cigar afterwards, Olivia insisted on his smoking without rising. The obligatory dinner-parties which he used to dread seemed no longer the same dreary infliction. With his beautiful daughter acting as hostess, these solemn ordeals became comparatively lively; the guests no longer appeared to be insufferably bored. The morning ride too, with her for a companion, was in pleasing contrast to the lonely ramble on horseback to which he had been accustomed; he now got into the way of coming over from the court-house for luncheon, and even went the length of taking an occasional evening drive with Olivia in the new barouche which had arrived for her use, a mode of amusement which no one had ever seen him indulge in before.

Such, then, was Olivia's new home, which, if it offered nothing that was not in unison with her gentle disposition, yet was not of a sort to develop the warmer feelings of her nature. Her life had been so far a happy one; she had never known disappointment or sorrow, and so it continued to be; but it was a life of chastened affection and without sentiment; and at an age when most English girls in India are wives and mothers, the great romance of life had not even yet presented itself. With her, life had been made up of the study of art and the pursuit of amusement in sober fashion; the graces more than the affections had been cultivated; and so far the transfer to an Indian home had not caused a change. The relations between father and daughter were those of mutual respect and calm affection; and a looker-on might have said that Miss Cunningham's disposition was one in which the effect of amiable temper was enhanced by polished manner, rather than one of deep feeling. Once only did her father step out of his usual reserve; one day when