“Did you ever see a prettier creature?” she said to Brotherton, “and I would not say but there were two of them. But mother’s just a fool about Liddy. She thinks there’s nothing like her on the face of the earth. Mother, here’s a relation come to see you,” she added, turning round.
Mrs. Joscelyn gave a little cry. Brotherton was standing against the light, so that his features were not at first decipherable. She made a quick step forward, throwing out her hands, then grew suddenly pale.
“I don’t know what I was thinking of,” she said, faintly. “I am sure I beg your friend’s pardon, Joan, and yours too.”
“I see what you’re thinking of, mother--but there’s nothing in it,” Joan said. “This is young Mr. Brotherton, who’s come to the Fells asking for a cousin of his name that married here long ago. If it’s not you, I don’t know who it can be--and I’ve brought him to see you. It would be his father you knew, for he’s but a young lad himself, as you can see.”
“He’s kindly welcome,” Mrs. Joscelyn said, and he was brought into the parlour, and a great deal of family explanation was gone through. Mrs. Joscelyn had her pride of birth, as well as her daughter, and it had always been a secret pleasure to her to think that there was a Sir John in her family, who might turn up some time or other and balance the faded Joscelyn pretensions with a far more tangible living dignity. For her own part, she did not know anything about Sir John; but it gratified her mightily to think that he had remembered he had a cousin married in the Fell-country. “There could not be any--stranger that it would give me more pleasure to see,” she said.
Young Brotherton, for his part, was delighted with his old cousin. It was from her, he perceived with pleasure, that Liddy had taken her willowy grace, and the refined and delicate features which bore little resemblance to those of Mrs. Selby. He was in a humour to be pleased with everything he saw. When the master of the house appeared, he thought him the model of an old North-country squire, rough, perhaps, but manly and full of character, as suited that strong-minded country. The plainness of manners and living, the woman-servant, not very adroit, that served the dinner--which was plainly dinner, and not luncheon--the atmosphere of farm and stables outside of the house, instead of park and pleasure-grounds, all struck him in the most favourable light. Liddy had thrown glamour in the young man’s eyes; he saw them all through her. These, the unusual features in her surroundings, appeared to him in the form of characteristic traits and country peculiarities, not as symptoms of a level of society lower than his own. It was all piquant, novel, delightful, and when he was asked to stay, a grace which Joscelyn put forth to the wonder and admiration of all the household, he accepted the invitation with eagerness. Mrs. Selby, for one, could not get over her astonishment.