Thy yet unwritten brow."
—Willis.
"When will my grandpa come?" little Elsie asked again and again, and finding that no one could tell her, she set herself to watch the passing boats, often coaxing her mammy out upon the lawn or down to the very water's edge, in her eagerness for a sight of him; her first look into the face of a relative.
She was fond of Mrs. Murray as she had been of Mr. Cameron, and clung with ardent affection to her mammy, yet the baby heart yearned for parental love, and naturally she expected it from her grandfather.
Had she heard that her father was coming, she would have been wild with joy; the arrival of her grandfather seemed the next best thing that could happen.
Mildred knew nothing of the child's anticipations, yet her heart ached for the little creature as she perceived how determined Mr. Dinsmore was to shut her out from his.
"She's a fortunate little miss," he remarked of her, as they came in sight of a sugar and orange plantation exceeding in size and fertility almost any they had passed, and the captain of the boat, pointing it out, said, "That's Viamede; the old Grayson place."
They were sweeping by a large sugar house; then came an immense orange orchard, and then a long and wide stretch of lawn, with the loveliest carpet of velvety green and most magnificent shade trees they had ever beheld; half concealing, with their great arms and abundant foliage, a lordly mansion set far back among them.
So surpassingly lovely was the whole scene, that for a moment Mildred could have echoed her uncle's words, and almost found it in her heart to envy the young heiress of it all; but the next she said to herself, "No, no, not for all this would I be so lonely and loveless as she, poor, little, forlorn girlie!"