"If my tea stands too long," repeated the wine-merchant mechanically, his
mind getting farther and farther away from his breakfast, and his eyes
fixing themselves more and more inquiringly on his housekeeper's face.
"If my tea--Dear, dear me, Mrs. Goldstraw! what _is_ the manner and tone
of voice that you remind me of? It strikes me even more strongly to-day,
than it did when I saw you yesterday. What can it be?"

"What can it be?" repeated Mrs. Goldstraw.

She said the words, evidently thinking while she spoke them of something
else. The wine-merchant, still looking at her inquiringly, observed that
her eyes wandered towards the chimney-piece once more. They fixed on the
portrait of his mother, which hung there, and looked at it with that
slight contraction of the brow which accompanies a scarcely conscious
effort of memory. Mr. Wilding remarked.

"My late dear mother, when she was five-and-twenty."

Mrs. Goldstraw thanked him with a movement of the head for being at the
pains to explain the picture, and said, with a cleared brow, that it was
the portrait of a very beautiful lady.

Mr. Wilding, falling back into his former perplexity, tried once more to
recover that lost recollection, associated so closely, and yet so
undiscoverably, with his new housekeeper's voice and manner.

"Excuse my asking you a question which has nothing to do with me or my
breakfast," he said. "May I inquire if you have ever occupied any other
situation than the situation of housekeeper?"