..but one can't have everything;
and she speaks Italian..."
Madame de Chantelle's fond insistence on the likeness
between Effie Leath and her father, if not particularly
gratifying to Darrow, had at least increased his desire to
see the little girl. It gave him an odd feeling of
discomfort to think that she should have any of the
characteristics of the late Fraser Leath: he had, somehow,
fantastically pictured her as the mystical offspring of the
early tenderness between himself and Anna Summers.
His encounter with Effie took place the next morning, on the
lawn below the terrace, where he found her, in the early
sunshine, knocking about golf balls with her brother.
Almost at once, and with infinite relief, he saw that the
resemblance of which Madame de Chantelle boasted was mainly
external. Even that discovery was slightly distasteful,
though Darrow was forced to own that Fraser Leath's
straight-featured fairness had lent itself to the production
of a peculiarly finished image of childish purity. But it
was evident that other elements had also gone to the making
of Effie, and that another spirit sat in her eyes. Her
serious handshake, her "pretty" greeting, were worthy of the
Leath tradition, and he guessed her to be more malleable
than Owen, more subject to the influences of Givre; but the
shout with which she returned to her romp had in it the note
of her mother's emancipation.
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