and slipped away upstairs. She was a great hand for being by when the
children were dressing to go out, and no one in the family, not even
Chas, could tie a white lawn bow half so well as mother....
Looloo lingered in the dining-room, the family sitting-room of evenings,
where Theodore had engaged his father at checkers. Hen, dropping into a
chair by the sofa as if she were rather tired, asked Cally for gossip of
the gay world, but Cally answered briefly out of regard for the chasm
between: how contract the name and fame of Mr. Canning to fit this
shabby little "parlor"? Hen was thin, colorless, and sweet-faced, and
was known in the family (for the Cooneys, strange to say, knew of
enormous individual differences among themselves) as the most thoughtful
and considerate of the children, and as alone possessing the real Ambler
nose. She rather suggested some slender pale flower, made to look at its
slenderest and palest beside her cousin's rich blossom. Still, Hen was
accounted a fine stenographer: they paid her sixty dollars a month at
the bookstore, where she earned double at least.
For five minutes the talk between these two girls, of about the same age
and blood but, it seemed, almost without a point of contact, was
considerably perfunctory. Then, by an odd chance and in the wink of an
eye, it took on a very distinct interest. Carlisle inquired if Hen had
ever heard of a man named V. Vivian, said to be a nephew of Mr. Beirne;
and Hen, with a little exclamation, and a certain quickening of
countenance, replied that she had been raised with him. Moreover, she
referred to him as V.V....
Though the Cooneys knew everybody, as well as everything, and though
Carlisle had thought before now of putting an inquiry to Hen or Chas in
this particular direction, the manner of her cousin's reply was a
decided surprise to her, and somehow a disagreeable surprise.
"Oh! Really?" said she, rather coldly. "I understood--some one told
me--that the man had just come here to live."
"He's just come _back_," explained Hen, with interest. "Why, he was born
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