God said I might--and I did. Nina takes care of you."
They told him that he had fainted from excess of joy, but Richard
believed that Nina had been with him all the same, cherishing that
conviction even to this hour, when he stood there face to face
with her, unconsciously saying to himself, "Gloriously beautiful
Nina. In all my imaginings of you I never saw aught so fair as
this. Edith is beautiful, but not--"
"As beautiful as Nina was, am I?" said a voice behind him, and
turning round, Richard drew Edith to his side, and encircling her
with his arm answered frankly,
"No, my child, you are not as beautiful as Nina."
"Disappointed in me, are you not? Tell me honestly," and Edith
peered up half-archly, half-timidly into the eyes whose glance she
scarcely yet dared meet.
"I can hardly call it disappointment," Richard answered, smiling
down upon her. "You are different-looking from what I supposed,
that is all. Still you are much like what I remember your mother
to have been, save that her eyes were softer than yours, and her
lip not quite so proudly curved.
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