"Yes, I can see the Lamp."
"House of Flamma," said old Iden.
"House of Flamma," repeated Amaryllis, hastily, eager to show that she understood all about it. She feared lest he should enter into the history of the House of Flamma and of his connection with it; she had heard it all over and over again; her mother was a Flamma; she had herself some of the restless Flamma blood in her. When anything annoyed her or made her indignant her foot used to tap the floor, and her neck flush rosy, and her face grow dusky like the night. Then, striving to control herself, she would say to herself, "I will not be a Flamma."
Except her dear mother and one other, Amaryllis detested and despised the whole tribe of the Flammas, the nervous, excitable, passionate, fidgetty, tipsy, idle, good-for-nothing lot; she hated them all, the very name and mention of them; she sided with her father as an Iden against her mother's family, the Flammas. True they were almost all flecked with talent like white foam on a black horse, a spot or two of genius, and the rest black guilt or folly. She hated them; she would not be a Flamma.
How should she at sixteen understand the wear and tear of life, the pressure of circumstances, the heavy weight of difficulties—there was something to be said even for the miserable fidgetty Flammas, but naturally sixteen judged by appearances. Shut up in narrow grooves and working day after day, year after year, in a contracted way, by degrees their constitutional nervousness became the chief characteristic of their existence. It was Intellect overcome—over-burdened—with two generations of petty cares; Genius dulled and damped till it went to the quart pot.
Sixteen could scarcely understand this. Amaryllis detested the very name; she would not be a Flamma.
But she was a Flamma for all that; a Flamma in fire of spirit, in strength of indignation, in natural capacity; she drew, for instance, with the greatest ease in pencil or pen-and-ink, drew to the life; she could write a letter in sketches.
Her indignation sometimes at the wrongfulness of certain things seemed to fill her with a consuming fire. Her partizanship for her father made her sometimes inwardly rage for the lightning, that she might utterly erase the opposer. Her contempt of sycophancy, and bold independence led her constantly into trouble.
Flamma means a flame.
Yet she was gentleness itself too; see her at the bookshelves patiently endeavouring to please the tiresome old man.