“I'll give you a bucketful,” said Rolfe; then, with the servant's help, took his little bed and put it close to the window; the moonlight streamed in on the boy's face, his great black eyes glittered in it. He was diabolically beautiful. “Kiss me, moonshine,” said he; “I like to wash in you.”
Next day he was, apparently, quite well, and certainly ripe for fresh mischief. Rolfe studied him, and, the evening before he went, gave Sir Charles and Lady Bassett his opinion, but not with his usual alacrity; a weight seemed to hang on him, and, more than once, his voice trembled.
“I shall tell you,” said he, “what I see—what I foresee—and then, with great diffidence, what I advise.
“I see—what naturalists call a reversion in race, a boy who resembles in color and features neither of his parents, and, indeed, bears little resemblance to any of the races that have inhabited England since history was written. He suggests rather some Oriental type.”
Sir Charles turned round in his chair, with a sigh, and said, “We are to have a romance, it seems.”
Lady Bassett stared with all her eyes, and began to change color.
The theorist continued, with perfect composure, “I don't undertake to account for it with any precision. How can I? Perhaps there is Moorish blood in your family, and here it has revived; you look incredulous, but there are plenty of examples, ay, and stronger than this: every child that is born resembles some progenitor; how then do you account for Julia Pastrana, a young lady who dined with me last week, and sang me 'Ah perdona,' rather feebly, in the evening? Bust and figure like any other lady, hand exquisite, arms neatly turned, but with long, silky hair from the elbow to the wrist. Face, ugh! forehead made of black leather, eyes all pupil, nose an excrescence, chin pure monkey, face all covered with hair; briefly, a type extinct ten thousand years before Adam, yet it could revive at this time of day. Compared with La Pastrana, and many much weaker examples of antiquity revived, that I have seen, your Mauritanian son is no great marvel, after all.”
“This is a little too far-fetched,” said Sir Charles, satirically; “Bella's father was a very dark man, and it is a tradition in our family that all the Bassetts were as black as ink till they married with you Rolfes, in the year 1684.”
“Oho!” said Rolfe, “is it so? See how discussion brings out things.”
“And then,” said Lady Bassett, “Charles dear, tell Mr. Rolfe what I think.”