Mrs. Delansing's brow smoothed, and she looked down with a shade of complacency. "Yes, this is good," she said. "This is very good. Your grandfather,—I should say your great-uncle, bought this lace for me in Brussels. It is peculiarly fine, you may perceive. The young woman who made it lost her eyesight in consequence."
"Oh, how dreadful!" cried Hildegarde. "How could you—" "How could you bear to wear it?" was what she was going to say, but she checked herself, and the old lady went on, placidly.
"Your great-uncle paid something more than the price asked on that account. He thought something more was due; he was a man of great benevolence. This is point lace."
"Yes," said Hildegarde, "Point d'Alençon; I never saw a more delicate piece."
"Ah! you know point lace!" said Mrs. Delansing. Her voice took on a new tone, and she looked at the girl with more friendly eyes. "I did not know that any young women of the new generation understood point. These matters seem to be thought of little consequence nowadays. I have myself spent months in the study of a special point, and felt myself well repaid."
She put some searching questions, relative to the qualities of Spanish, Venice, and Rose point, and nodded her head at each modest but intelligent answer. Hildegarde blessed her mother and Cousin Wealthy, who had expounded to her the mysteries of lace. At the end of the catechism, the old lady sighed and shook her head.
"It is an exceptional thing," she said, "to find any knowledge of laces in the younger generations. I instructed my own daughters most carefully in this branch of a gentlewoman's education, but they have not thought proper to extend the instruction to their own children. I—a shocking thing happened to me last year!" She paused, and Hildegarde looked up in sympathy.
"What was it, Aunt Emily?" she asked.
Mrs. Delansing was still silent, lost in distressful reverie. At length, "It is painful to dwell upon," she said, "and yet these things are a warning, and it is, perhaps, a duty to communicate them. You have met my granddaughters, your cousins, Violette and Blanche?"
"Oh, yes!" said Hildegarde, smiling a little, and colouring a little too. These cousins were rather apt to attempt the city-cousin rôle, and to treat her as a country cousin and poor relation. She did not think they had had the best of it at their last meeting. "Yes, I know them," she said, simply.