Madam heaved a sigh—it might have been of relief, it might have been the reverse; no one could have told which from the expression of her face—as she bent a critical glance upon the young stranger who had come to find a home in her house.
She arose, came forward, and studied the fair, downcast face; for Star, after the first glance, knew she would receive no tender welcome from that cold, proud woman, and her heart sank like a dead weight in her bosom.
Something like a frown gathered on the woman’s brow as she marked her exceeding loveliness.
“Well, Stella, you have had a hard voyage,” she began, in smooth, cool tones, which made Star shrink from her and shiver slightly, they were so distant and devoid of feeling. “I am glad, however,” she went on, “that you are safe, and I hope, now that you are here and I am to give you a home, you will do your best to please me. You look very much like your mother as I remember her, although I trust your face will not prove as great a misfortune to you as hers did to her.”
This last statement was made with some severity. Evidently Mrs. Richards was not pleased to find the new arrival so beautiful in face and figure.
“Mamma unfortunate! How?” Star asked, surprise loosening her tongue.
“Is it possible that you do not know how she disgraced herself and family?” madam demanded, sternly, as if in some way Star was to blame for said disgrace. “Have you never been told how a poor clergyman once preached in the church where your mother attended worship, fell in love with her pretty face, and finally persuaded her to marry him, to the utter disregard of her whole family, who were highly respectable people.”
Star’s cheeks glowed hotly beneath this tirade, and her blue eyes flamed at this slur upon her idolized parents.
“I do not consider mamma’s marriage anything of a ‘misfortune’ or a ‘disgrace,’” she answered, with something of hauteur, and speaking very distinctly. “She was very happy all her life, and papa was a splendid man—a superior man.”
Mrs. Richards smiled in a lofty kind of way, as she returned: “It is very natural, I suppose, that you should be your father’s champion; nevertheless he was not, socially, your mother’s equal, and she degraded herself in the eyes of all her family by marrying a penniless preacher, and a dissenter, too.”