"All the more beautiful, Judson, for not being so tall as some of the ladies of our house. She owes nothing to size. Perhaps you have remarked, Judson, that those of the purest Carset blood have never been large women."
A sweet, complacent smile quivered around those old lips, as the countess settled back among her cushions. She, a petite creature, had Carset blood in her veins from both parents, and in her youth she had been distinguished among the most beautiful women of England. She was thinking of those days, when those withered eyelids closed again, and they followed her softly into her sleep, which the grim maid watched with the faithfulness of a slave.
Meantime Clara went into the long picture gallery, and there among a crowd of statues, and deeply-toned pictures by the old masters, made the acquaintance of her stately ancestors, and of the ladies who had one and all been peeresses in their own right—an access of rank, prized almost like a heritage of royalty by the old lady in the tower-chamber.
No one had gone with the young heiress into the gallery, for, with her childish wilfulness, she had preferred to go alone, and single out the Carset ladies by their resemblance to the old countess.
All at once she stopped before the picture of a lady, whose face struck her with a sudden sense of recognition. She looked at it earnestly—the golden brown hair, the downcast eyes, the flowing white dress. Across the mind of that wondering girl, came the shadow of another woman upon a white bed, with hair and eyes like those; but wide open, and to her lips came two words, "My Mother!"
CHAPTER XXIII.
EXPLANATIONS AND CONCESSIONS.
It often happens that a proud, austere person, so grounded in opinions and prejudices as to be considered above and beyond ordinary influences, will all at once, give heart and reason up to passionate or capricious fondness for some individual—often a very child—and yield everything to persuasion when reason is utterly rejected.
Indeed, few people like to be convinced; but the strongest mind ever bestowed on man or woman finds something gratifying to self-love in the persuasive enticements of affection.
This singular moral phenomenon astonished the neighbors and household of Lady Carset when she gave herself up, with the abandon of a child, to the caressing young creature, who had, it seemed, appeared in her home to win her back from the very brink of the grave, and make the sunset of her long life brighter with love than the dawn had been.