Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/129

BOOK THIRD: MR. LONGDON him to a seat again, and was casting about for cigarettes. "Be quiet and smoke, and I'll tell you."

Mitchy, on the sofa, received, with meditation, a light. "Will she understand? She has everything in the world but one," he added. "But that's half."

Vanderbank, before him, lighted for himself. "What is it?"

"A sense of humor."

"Oh yes, she's serious."

Mitchy smoked a little. "She's tragic."

His friend, at the fire, watched a moment the empty portion of the other room, then walked across to give the door a light push that all but closed it. "It's rather odd," he remarked as he came back—"that's quite what I just said to him. But he won't treat her to comedy."

 XII

"Is it the shock of the resemblance to her grandmother?" Vanderbank had asked of Mr. Longdon on rejoining him in his retreat. The old man, with his back turned, was gazing out of the window, and when, in answer, he showed his face, there were tears in his eyes. His answer, in fact, was just these tears, the significance of which Vanderbank immediately recognized. "It's still greater then than you gathered from her photograph."

"It's the most extraordinary thing in the world. I'm too absurd to be so upset"—Mr. Longdon smiled through his tears—"but if you had known Lady Julia you would understand. It's she again, as I first knew her, to the life; and not only in feature, in stature, in color, in movement, but in every bodily mark and sign, in every look of the eyes, above all—oh, to a degree!—in the sound, in the charm, of the voice." He spoke low and confidentially, but with an intensity that now relieved him— he 119