Trying, then, to keep down the unreasonable pain which thrilled my heaart on thus being made to feel that while Graham could devote to others the most grave and earnest, the manliest interest, he had no more than light raillery for Lucy, the friend of lang syne, I inquired calmly—
“On what points are we so closely in accordance?”
“We each have an observant faculty. You, perhaps, don’t give me credit for the possession; yet I have it.”
“But you were speaking of tastes. We may see the same objects, yet estimate them differently?”
“Let us bring it to the test. Of course, you cannot but render homage to the merits of Miss Fanshawe. Now, what do you think of others in the room—my mother, for instance; or the lions yonder, Messieurs A——and Z——; or, let us say, that pale little lady, Miss de Bassompierre?”
“You know what I think of your mother. I have not thought of Messieurs A——and Z——.”
“And the other?”
“I think she is, as you say, a pale little lady—pale certainly, just now, when she is fatigued with over- excitement.”
“You don’t remember her as a child?”
“I wonder sometimes whether you do.”
“I had forgotten her; but it is noticeable that circumstances, persons, even words and looks, that had slipped your memory, may, under certain conditions, certain aspects of your own or another’s mind, revive.”
“That is possible enough.”
“Yet,” he continued, “the revival is imperfect—needs confirmation, partakes so much of the dim char acter of a dream, or of the airy one of a fancy, that the testimony of a witness becomes necessary for corroboration. Were you not a guest at Bretton ten years ago, when Mr. Home brought his little girl, whom we then called ‘little Polly,’ to stay with mamma?”
“I was there the night she came, and also the morning she went away.”
“Rather a peculiar child, was she not? I wonder how I treated her. Was I fond of children in those days? Was there anything gracious or kindly about me—great, reckless schoolboy as I was? But you don’t recollect me, of course?”
“You have seen your own picture at La Terrasse. It is like you personally. In manner you were almost the same yesterday as to-day.”
“But, Lucy, how is that? Such an oracle really whets my curiosity. What am I to-day? What was I the yesterday of ten years back?”
“Gracious to whatever pleased you, unkindly or cruel to nothing.”
“There you are wrong. I think I was almost a brute to you, for instance.”
“A brute! No, Graham. I should never have patiently endured brutality.”
“This, however, I do remember: quiet Lucy Snowe tasted nothing of my grace.”
“As little of your cruelty.”