Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/130

THE AWKWARD AGE was restless in his emotion. He moved about, in his excitement, gently, as if with a sacred awe—as if, but a few steps away, he had been in the very presence. "She's all Lady Julia. There isn't a touch of her mother. It's unique—an absolute revival. I see nothing of her father, either—I see nothing of any one else. Isn't it thought wonderful by every one?" he went on. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"To have prepared you a little?"—Vanderbank felt almost guilty. "I see—I should have liked to make more of it; though," he added, smiling, "I might so, by putting you on your guard, have caused myself to lose what, if you'll allow me to say so, strikes me as one of the most touching tributes I've ever seen rendered to a woman. In fact, however, how could I know? I never saw Lady Julia, and you had, in advance, all the evidence that I could have: the portrait—pretty bad, in the taste of the time, I admit—and the three or four photographs that, with it, you must have noticed at Mrs. Brook's. These things must have compared themselves, for you, with my photograph, in there, of the granddaughter. The similarity, of course, we had all observed, but it has taken your wonderful memory and your admirable vision to put into it all the detail."

Mr. Longdon thought a moment, giving a dab with his pocket-handkerchief. "Very true—you're quite right. It's far beyond any identity in the pictures. But why did you tell me," he added more sharply, "that she isn't beautiful?"

"You've deprived me," Vanderbank laughed, "of the power of expressing civilly any surprise at your finding her so. But I said to you, please remember, nothing that qualified a jot my sense of the curious character of her face. I have always positively found in it a recall of the type of the period you must be thinking of. It isn't a bit modern. It's a face of Sir Thomas Lawrence—" 120