I must not delay to introduce this great-aunt, who was Sylvia’s monitress in the arts and graces of life, and left her on her death-bed such a curious heritage of worldliness. Lady Dee was the last surviving member of a younger branch of the line of the Lysles. She was not a real countess, like her great ancestress; the name “Lady” had been given her in baptism. Early in the last century she had come over the mountains in a lumbering coach, with an escort of mounted riders, to marry the Surveyor General of the Territory. She still had a picture of this coach, along with innumerable other treasures in cedar chests in her attic: fan-sticks of carved ivory, inlaid with gold; gold garter buckles with wonderful enameling; old seals and silver snuff-boxes; rare jewels, such as white topazes and red amethysts; and a whole trunkful of the curious tiny silk parasols with which great ladies used to protect their creamy complexions—no more than ten inches across, and with handles of inlaid and carven ivory. When Sylvia was a little girl with two pigtails hanging down her back, it was one of the joys of her life to explore these treasures, and deck herself in faded ball costumes and chains of jewels and gold.
Also, from Lady Dee she received contributions to her moral training; not in set discourses, but incidentally and by allusions. Rummaging in the cedar chests she once came upon a miniature which she had never seen before; a lady in whom she recognized the eyes of the Lysles, and the arrogance which all their portraits show. “Who is this, Aunt Lady?” she asked; and the old gentlewoman frowned and answered, “We never speak of her, my dear. She is the one woman who ever disgraced our name.”
Sylvia hesitated a long time before she spoke again. She had heard much of family skeletons in the table-talk—but always other families. “What did she do?” she asked, at last.
“She was married to three men,” was the reply.
Again Sylvia hesitated. “You mean,” she ventured—“you mean—at the same time?”
Lady Dee stared. “No, my dear,” she said, gravely. “Her husbands died.”
“But—but—” began the other, timidly, groping to find her way in a strange field of thought.
“If she had been a woman of delicacy,” pronounced Lady Dee, “she would have been true to one love.” Then, after a pause, she added, solemnly, “Remember this, my child. Think before you choose, for the women of our family are like Sterne’s starling—when they have once entered their cage, they never come out.”
It was Lady Dee who objected to the desultory nature of Sylvia’s education, and began a campaign, as a result of which the Major sent her off to a “college” at the age of thirteen. You must not be frightened by this imposing statement, for it is easy to call yourself a “college” in the South. Sylvia was away for three years, during which she really studied, and acquired much more than the usual accomplishments of a young lady.
She had an extraordinarily capable mind; serene and efficient, like everything else about her. When I met her I was a woman of forty-five, who a few years before had broken with my whole past, having discovered the universe of knowledge. I had been like a starving person breaking into a well-filled larder, and stuffing myself greedily and promiscuously. I had taken upon myself the task of contending with other people’s prejudices, and my rapture over Sylvia Castleman was partly the realization that here was a woman—actually a woman—who had no prejudices whatever. She wanted me to tell her all I knew; and it was a great delight to expound to her a new set of ideas, and see her mind go from point to point, leaping swiftly, laying hold of details, ordering, comparing—above all, applying. That you may have a picture of this mind in action, let me tell you what she did in her girlhood, all unassisted—how she broke with the religion of her forefathers.