All this took place in Paris, when General Ravenel Lee, Carolina's grandfather, was ambassador to France, and when her father, Captain Winchester Lee, was his first secretary.
Many brilliant personages surrounded the child and influenced her more or less, according to the fancy she took to them, for she was a magnetic personality herself, and accepted or rejected an influence according to some unknown inner guide.
Her mother was a woman of refinement and breeding, and to her the child owed much of her good taste and charmingly modest demeanour. But it was her father who captured her imagination.
One of her earliest recollections was of her father's voice and manner when she looked up from her novel and asked him why he did not spell his name Leigh as men in books spelled theirs.
She had not known her father very well, so she was totally unprepared for his reply. Although she had been but a little child, she could see his face and hear his voice as distinctly to-day as she did when he whirled around on the hearth-rug and looked down at her as she sat on a low stool with a book on her knees.
"Spell my name Leigh?" he had said, in a tone she never had heard him use before. "Child, you little know what blood flows in your veins, or you would thank God every night in your prayers that you inherit the name of Lee, spelled in its simplest way. Honest men, Carolina, pure women, heroes in every sense of the word; statesmen, warriors, brave, with the bravery which risks more than life itself, are your ancestors. They date back to the Crusaders, and down the long line are men of title in the old world, distinguished in ways you are too young to understand. Books, did you say? Your name appears in many a book, child, which records heroic deeds. On both your dear Northern mother's side and mine, you come of blood which is your proudest heritage. Were you poor and forced to earn your daily bread, you would still be rich in that which the world can never take away--good blood and a proud name. And remember this, too, little daughter, although your life has been spent in foreign lands, I loved America so well that I gave you the name of my native State, and my dearest wish is to restore Guildford and to pass the remainder of my life there."
It was a long, long speech for a little girl to remember, but it burned itself into her memory and kindled her pride to such a degree that she could hardly wait to tell some one of her newly discovered treasure.
Fortunately her first auditor happened to be her governess, and fortunately, also, her father chanced to overhear her as she translated his remarks into shrill French. He immediately stopped her, and these words also were seared into her memory through poignant mortification.
"I was wrong to tell you that, little daughter. I see that you are too young to have understood it properly. I can only undo the mischief by reminding you never to boast of your old family to any one. If we Southerners have one fault more than another, it is our tendency to mention the antiquity of our families--as if that counted where breeding were absent. You will observe that your dear mother never mentions hers, though she is a De Clifford. Let others boast if they will. Speak you of their family and name and be silent concerning your own. It is sufficient to feed your pride in secret by the inward knowledge of who you are. Will you try to remember that, little daughter, and forgive me for putting notions into that head of yours?"
She flew into his arms, and in that moment was born the passionate love and understanding which ever afterward existed between them.