"Rose," said he, "this may be the last little talk we have together here. I want to speak to you about your mother."
"My mother!" Unconsciously she drew nearer him. Her mother was—what? A banished dream, not forgotten, but relegated to dim tapestried chambers because the air of the present seemed to blur out memory by excess of light. She had awakened from her girlhood's dreams; to them, chiefly, her mother had belonged. Now that past beneficence was a faded flower found in a casket, a scent of beauty touched by time.
"Sit down," said MacLeod, and she obeyed him. He stretched out his legs at ease, and put his head back, his eyes closed, in an easy contemplation. "We don't speak of her very often, do we, little girl?"
"No!" Her irrepressible comment was, "I thought you had forgotten her."
But he continued,—
"I was thinking the other day how much you lose in not having known her as she was when I met her first."
"I have the miniature."
"I know. But that's only a suggestion. It doesn't help me bring her to life for you. She had beauty—not so much as you have—and an extraordinary grace and charm. She had, too, that something we trace back to breeding."
He had always undervalued the virtues claimed by gentle birth, and she looked at him, amazed. He understood, and laughed a little. His best weapon against the aristocrat had been tolerance, at its mildest, or a gentle scorn. Where a mob threw eggs, he tossed a rounded epithet.
"I know," he said, "you think I laugh at breeding. Not in her. She had its rarest virtues. She was like an old portrait come to life. She couldn't think of her own advantage. She couldn't lie. Ah, well! well!"