Frances rose up quickly, with the curious sensation of acting over something which she had rehearsed before, she did not know where or how. It was the girl whom she had remarked on the Marina as having just arrived who now stood looking about her curiously, with her travelling-cloak fastened only at the throat, her gauze veil thrown up about her hat. This new-comer came in quickly, not with the timidity of a stranger. She came out into the centre of the loggia, where the light fell fully around her, and showed her tall slight figure, the fair hair clustering in her neck, a certain languid grace of movement, which her energetic entrance curiously belied. Frances waited for some form of apology or self-introduction, prepared to be very civil, and feeling in reality pleased and almost grateful for the interruption.
But the young lady made no explanation. She put her hands up to her throat and loosed her cloak with a little sigh of relief. She undid the veil from her hat. “Thank heaven, I have got here at last, free of those people!” she said, putting herself _sans façon_ into Mr Waring’s chair, and laying her hat upon the little table. Then she looked up at the astonished girl, who stood looking on.
“Are you Frances?” she said; but the question was put in an almost indifferent tone.
“Yes; I am Frances. But I don’t know----” Frances was civil to the bottom of her soul, polite, incapable of hurting any one’s feelings. She could not say anything disagreeable; she could not demand brutally, Who are you? and what do you want here?
“I thought so,” said the stranger; “and, oddly enough, I saw you this afternoon, and wondered if it could be you. You are a little like mamma.--I am Constance, of course,” she added, looking up with a half-smile. “We ought to kiss each other, I suppose, though we can’t care much about each other, can we?--Where is papa?”
Frances had no breath to speak; she could not say a word. She looked at the new-comer with a gasp. Who was she? And who was papa? Was it some strange mistake which had brought her here? But then the question, “Are you Frances?” showed that it could not be a mistake.
“I beg your pardon,” she said; “I don’t understand. This is--Mr Waring’s. You are looking for--your father?”