“Lady Macbeth?” Paul suggested, and Miss Hansford replied: “Yes, that’s the one. A blood and thunder play. Why, I’d as soon go to Purgatory as to see it. I’ve never told a living soul before that we had an actress in the family. I’m so ashamed I hope you’ll keep it to yourself. I shouldn’t like to have Elder Atwater’s wife know it. She has never quite got over my going to see ‘Uncle Tom.’”
Paul did not share Miss Hansford’s prejudice against theatres and actresses, but he promised that neither Elder Atwater’s wife nor any other elder’s wife should ever hear from him of the disgrace attaching to Miss Hansford because her nephew’s wife’s aunt, dead years ago, had been an actress. Miss Hansford had handed him the picture, saying as she did so: “It’s Roger’s girl. He sent it in a letter. He thinks she looks like me.”
“By George, she’s a beauty, if she does; but what’s her name?” Paul said, bending close to the lamp and looking at the word “Elithe” written with very pale ink.
“I don’t wonder you ask,” Miss Hansford replied. “Such an outlandish name. I told you her great-grandmother was French, and they called the girl for her and that aunt on the stage. That’s the worst of it. Named for an actress! It’s pronounced A-l-double e-t-h.”
“Yes, I know—Aleeth. It’s a pretty name, and she is pretty, too,” Paul said, admiring the picture, whose large brown eyes looked at him as steadily and intelligently as if they were living eyes and could read his thoughts.
Some of the great-grandmother’s French blood had been transmitted to her descendant, who showed it in her features and in the pose of her head, covered with short curls, which made her look younger than she was. The nose was slightly retroussé and the mouth rather wide, but taken as a whole the face was charming. The dress was countrified and old-fashioned, and you knew at a glance that the artist was countrified, too, and not at all like the one to whom Clarice had sat. Every curve and line of her graceful figure showed to advantage, while Elithe’s position was cramped and awkward. Her hands were placed just where they looked large and stiff. Her boots, which showed under her short dress, were square-toed instead of pointed like those of Clarice, who was standing with her hands behind her in an attitude “for all the world like a play-actor,” Miss Hansford thought, mentally giving the preference to Elithe. Unconsciously Paul did the same. He did not think of Elithe’s boots or dress or hands. He saw only the lovely face, which held and mastered him with a power he could not define.
“Elithe,” he said, as if speaking to her in the flesh. “I know you are a nice girl with no nonsense in you.” Then to Miss Hansford: “Why don’t you have her come here to visit you?”
“It’s too expensive, for I should have to pay carfare both ways,” Miss Hansford replied; “and then she can’t be spared. There’s four more children, all boys,—little savages, I dare say. Lucy is weakly and the brunt of everything falls on Elithe, who works like a dog.”
“More reason why she should have an outing. Poor little Elithe! Let’s see how she’d look beside Clarice,” Paul said, and slipping his own picture from the case, he put Elithe’s in its place side by side with the proud beauty who seemed to look with disdain upon her humble neighbor.
Elithe, however, did not lose by the comparison. She only represented a different type of girlhood, and most people would have looked at her first and longest.