But they held a curiously veiled expression--a something guarded and inscrutable--as though they hid some secret inner knowledge sentinelled from the world at large.
Sara, meeting their still, enigmatic gaze, was subtly conscious of an odd sense of repulsion, almost amounting to dread, and then Elisabeth, making some trivial observation as she moved nearer to the fire, smiled across at her, and, in the extraordinary charm of her smile, the momentary sensation of fear was forgotten.
Nevertheless, it was with a feeling of relief that Sara encountered the gay, frank glance of the son.
Tim Durward, though dowered to the full with his mother's beauty, had yet been effectually preserved from the misfortune of being an effeminate repetition of her.

In him, Elisabeth's glowing auburn colouring had sobered to a steady brown--evidenced in the crisp, curly hair and sun-tanned skin; and the misty hyacinth-blue of her eyes had hardened in the eyes of her son into the clear, bright azure of the sea, whist the beautiful contours of her face, repeated in his, had strengthened into a fine young virility.
"I can't cure mother of introducing me as if I were the Lord Mayor," he murmured plaintively to Sara as they sat down to tea.

"I suppose it's the penalty of being an only son." "Nothing of the sort," asserted Elisabeth composedly.

"Naturally I'm pleased with you--you're so absurdly like me.

I always look upon you in the light of a perpetual compliment, because you've elected to grow up like me instead of like Geoffrey"-- nodding towards her husband.