Yet so vivid was Jean's impression of
what had been, that she would have sworn her nostrils were assailed by
a delicate fragrance, that her eyes beheld wind-blown petals of white
and pink.
The long mirror reflecting her showed her in her straight frock of dark
blue serge, with the white collars and cuffs. The same mirror had
reflected her mother's organdie. It, too, had been blue, Mary had told
her, but blue with such a difference! A faint forget-me-not shade,
with a satin girdle, and a stiff satin collar!
Two girls, with a quarter of a century between them. Yet the mother
had laughed and loved, and had looked forward to a long life with her
gay big husband. They had had ten years of it, and then there had been
just her ghost to haunt the old rooms.
Jean shivered a little as she went downstairs. She found herself a
little afraid of the lonely darkening house. She wished that Mary
would come.
Curled up in one of the big chairs, she waited. Half-asleep and
half-awake; she was aware of shadow-shapes which came and went. Her
Scotch great-grandfather, the little Irish great-grandmother; her
copper-headed grandfather, his English wife, her own mother, pale and
dark-haired and of Huguenot strain, her own dear father.
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