Fancy a brunette of the most decided type with a beautiful, passionate face, a cloud of waving dark hair, and eyes of starry brightness. By her tall, queenly figure place one equally lovely, yet as different in her type as flowers from jewels, dawn from sunset, or day from night.
An exquisite form, less tall and full than Jewel's, but perfectly proportioned, and with a fairy-like grace impossible to describe. Blue eyes of the brightest, rarest tint, and hair that fell to her waist in loose bright curls of that rich golden hue so dear to the artist's heart. Small, perfectly molded features and a dazzling complexion received a touch of piquancy from the delicate yet decided arch of the slender brows and the thick curling lashes both several degrees darker than her hair. Both girls had small hands and feet, and possessed every attribute of beauty. It was no wonder that strangers could not decide which was the lovelier, when their own mother was puzzled over the question.
There were moments—few and far between—when Mrs. Fielding almost said to herself that it was Flower to whom she would award the palm of beauty. But these were the moments when she was softened by a memory of the love she had borne Charlie Fielding before that last hour when her hot jealousy and hate had made her curse him as he lay dead at her feet.
But these softened moments were few and short.
"I am mad, mad!" she would cry, coming out of these spells as though from an abhorred trance. "I ought to hate Flower Fielding—ought to hate my own child, because she has her father's face."
There were times when she was half maddened by the memory of the past, by the thought of the horrible humiliation and pain she had endured long ago—alas! that she endured still. The old hot resentment and jealousy burned still in her heart, turned her blood to fire, and fevered her pulse. The fierce aspiration breathed over her husband's dead body for vengeance on the two who had blasted her life was fresh on her lips still.
"It was with her the night long, in dreaming or waking,
It abided in loathing, when daylight was breaking,
The burden of bitterness in her! Behold,
All her days were become as a tale that is told,
And she said to her sight, 'No good thing shalt thou see,
For the noonday is turned to darkness in me.'"
One very interesting event had occurred in the Fielding family since their twins had entered upon their seventeenth birthday.
Faithful old Maria, after bringing them through their childish ailments up to the years of girlhood, had bought a cabin near by with her savings of years, and "gone to herself," as she expressed it. Silly old soul, she had been beguiled by the attractions of a young mulatto buck who had his eye on her small savings, and she married him and settled down to married life with all its joys and woes, which in her case proved chiefly the latter.