and now he
perceived that there was something almost cadaverous in his uncle's
high-featured white face. But so clever were this young man's quick
sympathies and perceptions that he already learned that in these
semi-mortuary manifestations there was no cause for alarm. His light
imagination had gained a glimpse of Mr. Wentworth's spiritual mechanism,
and taught him that, the old man being infinitely conscientious, the
special operation of conscience within him announced itself by several
of the indications of physical faintness.

The Baroness took her uncle's hand, and stood looking at him with her
ugly face and her beautiful smile. "Have I done right to come?" she
asked.

"Very right, very right," said Mr. Wentworth, solemnly. He had arranged
in his mind a little speech; but now it quite faded away. He felt almost
frightened. He had never been looked at in just that way--with just that
fixed, intense smile--by any woman; and it perplexed and weighed upon
him, now, that the woman who was smiling so and who had instantly given
him a vivid sense of her possessing other unprecedented attributes, was
his own niece, the child of his own father's daughter. The idea that his
niece should be a German Baroness, married "morganatically" to a Prince,
had already given him much to think about. Was it right, was it just,
was it acceptable? He always slept badly, and the night before he had
lain awake much more even than usual, asking himself these questions.
The strange word "morganatic" was constantly in his ears; it reminded
him of a certain Mrs. Morgan whom he had once known and who had been a
bold, unpleasant woman. He had a feeling that it was his duty, so long
as the Baroness looked at him, smiling in that way, to meet her glance
with his own scrupulously adjusted, consciously frigid organs of vision;
but on this occasion he failed to perform his duty to the last. He
looked away toward his daughters. "We are very glad to see you," he had
said. "Allow me to introduce my daughters--Miss Charlotte Wentworth,
Miss Gertrude Wentworth."

The Baroness thought she had never seen people less demonstrative.
But Charlotte kissed her and took her hand, looking at her sweetly and
solemnly. Gertrude seemed to her almost funereal, though Gertrude
might have found a source of gayety in the fact that Felix, with his
magnificent smile, had been talking to her; he had greeted her as a
very old friend. When she kissed the Baroness she had tea