g quickly to meet me with a smile--

'My young cousin!' she cried, and kissed me on both cheeks. 'You know who
I am? Your cousin Monica--Monica Knollys--and very glad, dear, to see you,
though she has not set eyes on you since you were no longer than that
paper-knife. Now come here to the lamp, for I must look at you. Who is she
like? Let me see. Like your poor mother, I think, my dear; but you've the
Aylmer nose--yes--not a bad nose either, and, come I very good eyes, upon
my life--yes, certainly something of her poor mother--not a bit like you,
Austin.'

My father gave her a look as near a smile as I had seen there for a long
time, shrewd, cynical, but kindly too, and said he--

'So much the better, Monica, eh?'

'It was not for me to say--but you know, Austin, you always were an ugly
creature. How shocked and indignant the little girl looks! You must not be
vexed, you loyal little woman, with Cousin Monica for telling the truth.
Papa was and will be ugly all his days. Come, Austin, dear, tell her--is
not it so?'

'What! depose against myself! That's not English law, Monica.'

'Well, maybe not; but if the child won't believe her own eyes, how is she
to believe me? She has long, pretty hands--you have--and very nice feet
too. How old is she?'

'How old, child?' said my father to me, transferring the question.

She recurred again to my eyes.

'That is the true grey--large, deep, soft--very peculiar. Yes, dear, very
pretty--long lashes, and such bright tints! You'll be in the Book of
Beauty, my dear, when you come out, and have all the poet people writing
verses to the tip of your nose--and a very pretty little nose it is!'

I must mention here how striking was the change in my father's spirit while
talking and listening to his odd and voluble old Cousin Monica. Reflected
from bygone associations, there had come a glimmer of something, not
gaiety, indeed, but like an appreciation of gaiety. The gloom and
inflexibility were gone, and there was an evident encouragement and
enjoyment of the incessant sallies of his bustling visitor.

How morbid must have been the tendencies of his habitual solitude, I think,
appeared from the evident thawing and brightening that accompanied even
this transient gleam of human society. I was not a companion--more childish
than most girls of my age, and trained in all his whimsical ways, never to
interrupt a silence, or force his thoughts by unexpected question or remark
out of the