'Have you ever heard if he resembles his father?'
'I believe not. I am told he is like his mother's family.'
'Then he ought to be handsome. Lady Florence Ilmington was a famous
beauty.'
They were sitting in the drawing-room after dinner, the room dimly
lighted by darkly-shaded lamps, the windows wide open to the summer sky
and moonlit lake. In that subdued light Lady Maulevrier looked a woman
in the prime of life. The classical modelling of her features and the
delicacy of her complexion were unimpaired by time, while those traces
of thought and care which gave age to her face in the broad light of day
were invisible at night. John Hammond contemplated that refined and
placid countenance with profound admiration. He remembered how her
ladyship's grandson had compared her with the Sphinx; and it seemed to
him to-night, as be studied her proud and tranquil beauty, that there
was indeed something of the mysterious, the unreadable in that
countenance, and that beneath its heroic calm there might be the ashes
of tragic passion, the traces of a life-long struggle with fate.
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