“Mamma, you put her out of countenance. I often tell you abruptness is your fault; remember, too, that to you she is a stranger, and does not know your ways.”
“Now, when she looks down; now, when she turns sideways, who is she like, Graham?”
“Indeed, mamma, since you propound the riddle, I think you ought to solve it!”
“And you have known her some time, you say—ever since you first began to attend the school in the Rue Fossette:—yet you never mentioned to me that singular resemblance!”
“I could not mention a thing of which I never thought, and which I do not now acknowledge. What can you mean?”
“Stupid boy! look at her.”
Graham did look: but this was not to be endured; I saw how it must end, so I thought it best to anticipate.
“Dr. John,” I said, “has had so much to do and think of, since he and I shook hands at our last parting in St. Ann’s Street, that, while I readily found out Mr. Graham Bretton, some months ago, it never occurred to me as possible that he should recognise Lucy Snowe.”
“Lucy Snowe! I thought so! I knew it!” cried Mrs. Bretton. And she at once stepped across the hearth and kissed me. Some ladies would, perhaps, have made a great bustle upon such a discovery without being particularly glad of it; but it was not my godmother’s habit to make a bustle, and she preferred all sentimental demonstrations in bas-relief. So she and I got over the surprise with few words and a single salute; yet I daresay she was pleased, and I know I was. While we renewed old acquaintance, Graham, sitting opposite, silently disposed of his paroxysm of astonishment.
“Mamma calls me a stupid boy, and I think I am so,” at length he said; “for, upon my honour, often as I have seen you, I never once suspected this fact: and yet I perceive it all now. Lucy Snowe! To be sure! I recollect her perfectly, and there she sits; not a doubt of it. But,” he added, “you surely have not known me as an old acquaintance all this time, and never mentioned it.”