“A soul trained by love and suffering, as in the old legend,” said Mr. Belamour thoughtfully.
Thoroughly pleasant was here tete-a-tete with him, especially when she artlessly asked him whether her dear sister were not all she had told him, and he fervently answered that indeed she was “a perfect lesson to all so-called beauties of what true loveliness of a countenance can be.”
“Oh, I am so glad,” cried Aurelia. “I never saw a face—a woman’s I mean—that I like as well as my dear sister’s!”
She was sorry when they were interrupted by a call from Mr. Wayland, who had reported himself at the Secretary of War, but could do no more that day, and had come to inquire for her. He and Mr. Belamour drew apart into a window, and conversed in a low voice, and then they came to her, and Mr. Wayland desired to know from where she found the recipe for the cosmetic which had nearly cost her so dearly.
“It was in a shelf in the wainscoting, in a sort of little study at that house,” said Aurelia.
“Among other papers?”
“Quantities of other papers.”
“Of what kind?”
“Letters, and bills, and wills, and parchments! Oh, so dusty! Some were on paper tumbling to pieces, and some on tiny slips of parchment.”
“And you read them all?”