Mr. Yorke smiled satirically. Clara was notable in the family for making great beginnings which came to nothing.
"But I have other things finished," she said eagerly, and brought out a poem. All her fears were gone. She was full of confidence in herself.
We spare the reader a transcription of this production. Mephistopheles had a good deal to do with it, and it was probably written during some midnight ecstasy, when the young woman had been reading Faust. It was meant to be very fearful; and as the authoress read it herself, all the terrible passages were rendered with emphasis.
Mrs. Yorke listened with a doubtful face. The reading was quite out of her gentle mental sphere; and Carl's hand shaded his eyes, which had a habit of laughing when his lips did not. Mr. Yorke, with his mouth very much down at the corners, his eyes very much cast down, and his eyebrows very much raised, glanced over a page of the book in his hand.
"I chanced to-night across the first touch of humor I have seen in Villemain," he said. "He quotes Crébillon: 'Corneille à pris le ciel, Racine la terre; il ne me restait plus que l'enfer. Je m'y suis jetté à corps perdu.' 'Malheureusement,' says Villemain, 'malheureusement il n'est pas aussi infernal qu'il le croit.'"
Without raising his face, Mr. Yorke lifted his eyes, and shot at the poetess a glance over his glasses.
Instantly her face became suffused with blushes, and her eyes with tears.
Mrs. Yorke spoke hastily. "I am sure, papa, the dear girls deserve every encouragement for their intentions and efforts. I am grateful and happy to see how nobly they are taking our troubles; and I cannot doubt that, with their talents and good-will, they will accomplish something. But it is too late to talk more about it to-night. You must be tired, and my head is as heavy as a poppy. Shall we have prayers?"
She rose in speaking, went to the table, and, standing between her two elder daughters, with an arm round the neck of each, kissed them both, tears standing in her eyes. "If you never succeed in winning fame, my dears," she said, "I shall still be proud and fond of you. Your sweet, helpful spirit is better than many books."