Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/131

BOOK THIRD: MR. LONGDON "It's a face of Gainsborough!" Mr. Longdon returned with spirit. "Lady Julia herself harked back."

Vanderbank, clearly, was equally touched and amused. "Let us say at once that it's a face of Raphael."

His old friend's hand was instantly on his arm. "That's exactly what I often said to myself of Lady Julia's."

"The forehead's a little too high," said Vanderbank.

"But it's just that excess, that, with the exquisite eyes and the particular disposition, round it, of the fair hair, makes the individual grace, makes the beauty of the reminder."

Released by Lady Julia's lover, the young man, in turn, grasped him as an encouragement to confidence. "It's a face that should have the long side-ringlets of 1830. It should have the rest of the personal arrangement, the pelisse, the shape of bonnet, the sprigged muslin dress and the cross-laced sandals. It should have arrived in a peagreen 'tilbury,' and it should be a reader of Mrs. Radcliffe. And all this to complete the Raphael!"

Mr. Longdon, who, relieved by expression, had began to recover himself, looked hard a moment at his companion. "How you've observed her!"

Vanderbank met it without confusion. "Whom haven't I observed? Do you like her?" he then rather oddly and abruptly asked. The old man broke away again. "How can I tell—with such disparities?"

"The manner must be different," Vanderbank suggested. "And the things she says."

His visitor was before him again. "I don't know what to make of them. They don't go with the rest of her. Lady Julia," said Mr. Longdon, "was rather shy."

On this too his host could meet him. "She must have been. And Nanda—yes, certainly—doesn't give that impression." 121