“Fifteen are dead, and are resting in peace in different lands: ten of them died in infancy ere I had well taken my first look at their little faces. She is the sixteenth. See you the likeness?” added the gipsy, pointing to the girl’s face; as she stood, modest and silent, a conscious colour tingeing her olive cheeks, and glancing up now and again through her long black eyelashes at Abel Carew.
“Likeness to you, Ketira?”
“Not to me: though there exists enough of it between us to betray that we are mother and daughter. To him—her father.”
And, while Abel was looking at the girl, I looked. And in that moment it struck me that her face bore a remarkable likeness to his own. The features were of the same high-bred cast, pure and refined; you might have said they were made in the same mould.
“I see; yes,” said Abel.
“He has been gone, too, this many a year; as you, perhaps, may know, Abel; and is with the rest, waiting for us in the spirit-land. Kettie does not remember him, it is so long ago. There are only she and I left to go now. Kettie——”
She suddenly changed her language to one I did not understand. Neither, as was easy to be seen, did Abel Carew. Whether it was Hebrew, or Egyptian, or any other rare tongue, I knew not; but I had never in my life heard its sounds before.
“I am telling Kettie that in you she may see what her father was—for the likeness in your face and his, allowing for the difference of age, is great.”
“Does Kettie not speak English?” inquired Abel.
“Oh yes, I speak it,” answered the girl, slightly smiling, and her tones were soft and perfect as those of her mother.