I caught the light of her pensive smile through the dimness of the hour. She was so accustomed to my roaming in the woods, she had suffered no alarm.
"If my mother thinks it right, you will not object to my going to see Mr. Regulus," said I, as Richard lifted the gate-latch for me to enter.
"For yourself, no; but not for me. I can take care of myself, Gabriella."
He spoke proudly. He did not quite come up to my childish idea of a boy hero, but I admired his self-reliance and bravery. I did not want him to despise me or my lack of spirit. I began to waver in my good resolution.
My mother called me, in that soft, gentle tone, so full of music and of love.
In ten minutes I had told her all.
CHAPTER III.
If I thought any language of mine could do justice to her character, I would try to describe my mother. Were I to speak of her, my voice would choke at the mention of her name. As I write, a mist gathers over my eyes. Grief for the loss of such a being is immortal, as the love of which it is born.
I have said that we were poor,—but ours was not abject poverty, hereditary poverty,—though I had never known affluence, or even that sufficiency which casts out the fear of want. I knew that my mother was the child of wealth, and that she had been nurtured in elegance and splendor. I inherited from her the most fastidious tastes, without the means of gratifying them. I felt that I had a right to be wealthy, and that misfortune alone had made my mother poor, had made her an alien from her kindred and the scenes of her nativity. I felt a strange pride in this conviction. Indeed there was a singular union of pride and diffidence in my character, that kept me aloof from my young companions, and closed up the avenues to the social joys of childhood.