She appeared to hate him very much.
She inquired kindly after myself and my prospects in life, but did not
seem deeply interested in my answers--until later, when I talked of my
French life, and my dear father and mother, when she listened with eager
sympathy, and I was much touched. She asked if I had portraits of them;
I had--most excellent miniatures; and when we parted I had promised to
call upon her next afternoon, and bring these miniatures with me.
She seemed a languid woman, much ennuyee, and evidently without a large
circle of acquaintance. She told me I was the only person in the whole
park whom she had bowed to that day. Her husband was in Hamburg, and she
was going to meet him in Paris in a day or two.
I had not so many friends but what I felt rather glad than otherwise to
have met her, and willingly called, as I had promised, with the
portraits.
She lived in a large, new house, magnificently up near the Marble Arch.
She was quite alone when I called, and asked me immediately if I had
brought the miniatures; and looked at them quite eagerly, and then at
me, and exclaimed--
"Good heavens, you are your father's very image!"
Indeed, I had always been considered so.
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