were about; but whereas the little De La Poers had from their infancy
laughed almost noiselessly, and without making faces, Kate for her
misfortune had never been broken of a very queer contortion of her
lips, and a cackle like a bantam hen's.

When this unlucky cackle had been several times repeated, it caused
Lady Barbara, who had been sitting with her back to the inner room,
to turn round.

Poor Lady Barbara! It would not be easy to describe her feelings
when she saw the young lady, whom she had brought delicately blue and
white, like a speedwell flower, nearly as black as a sweep.

Lord de la Poer broke out into an uncontrollable laugh, half at the
aunt, half at the niece. "Why, she has grown a moustache!" he
exclaimed. "Girls, what have you been doing to her?" and walking up
to them, he turned Kate round to a mirror, where she beheld her own
brown eyes looking out of a face dashed over with black specks,
thicker about the mouth, giving her altogether much the colouring of
a very dark man closely shaved. It was so exceedingly comical, that
she went off into fits of laughing, in which she was heartily joined
by all the merry party.

"There," said Lord de la Poer, "do you want to know what your Uncle
Giles is like? you've only to look at yourself See, Barbara, is it
not a capital likeness?"

"I never thought her like GILES," said her aunt gravely, with an
emphasis on the name, as if she meant that the child did bear a
likeness that was really painful to her.