younger
lady had the same sweet, low and kindly voice as her mother.

"I am very well, thank you," said Sheila, blushing somewhat and
not lifting her eyes, while Lavender was impatient that she had
not answered with a laugh and some light retort, such as would have
occurred to almost any woman in the circumstances.

On the journey down, Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine, seated opposite each
other in two corner seats, kept up a continual cross-fire of small
pleasantries, in which the young American lady had distinctly the best
of it, chiefly by reason of her perfect manner. The keenest thing she
said was said with a look of great innocence and candor in the large
gray eyes; and then directly afterward she would say something very
nice and pleasant in precisely the same voice, as if she could not
understand that there was any effort on the part of either to assume
an advantage. The mother sometimes turned and listened to this aimless
talk with an amused gravity, as of a cat watching the gambols of a
kitten, but generally she devoted herself to Sheila, who sat opposite
her. She did not talk much, and Sheila was glad of that, but the
girl felt that she was being observed with some little curiosity. She
wished that Mrs. Kavanagh would turn those observant gray eyes of hers
away in some other direction. Now and again Sheila would point out
what she considered strange or striking in the country outside, and
for a moment the elderly lady would look out. But directly afterward
the gray eyes would come back to Sheila, and the girl knew they were
upon her. At last she so persistently stared out of the window that
she fell to dreaming, and all the trees and the meadows and the
farm-houses and the distant heights and hollows went past her
as though they were in a sort of mist, while she replied to Mrs.
Kavanagh's chance remarks in a mechanical fashion, and could only hear
as a monotonous murmur the talk of the two people at the other side
of the carriage. How much of the journey did she remember? She was
greatly struck by the amount of open land in the neighborhood
of London--the commons between Wandsworth and Streatham, and so
forth--and she was pleased with the appearance of the country about
Red Hill. For the rest, a succession of fair green pictures passed
by her, all bathed in a calm, half-misty summer sunlight: then they
pierced the chalk-hills (which Sheila, at first sight, fancied were of
granite) and rumbled through the tunnels