ishes for my return less expressed from
herself than as messages from others, words of the old child-like
familiarity repressed, and "Dearest Sisty" abandoned for the cold form
of "Dear Cousin." Those letters, coming to me in a spot where maiden
and love had been as myths of the bygone, phantasms and eidola only
vouchsafed to the visions of fancy, had by little and little crept into
secret corners of my heart; and out of the wrecks of a former romance,
solitude and revery had gone far to build up the fairy domes of a
romance yet to come. My mother's letters had never omitted to make
mention of Blanche,--of her forethought and tender activity, of her warm
heart and sweet temper,--and in many a little home picture presented
her image where I would fain have placed it, not "crystal seeing," but
joining my mother in charitable visits to the village, instructing the
young and tending on the old, or teaching herself to illuminate, from an
old missal in my father's collection, that she might surprise my
uncle with a new genealogical table, with all shields and quarterings,
blazoned or, sable, and argent; or flitting round my father where he
sat, and watching when he looked round for some book he was too lazy to
rise for. Blanche had made a new catalogue and got it by heart, and knew
at once from what corner of the Heraclea to summon the ghost. On all
these little traits had my mother been eulogistically minute; but
somehow or other she had never said, at least for the last two years,
whether Blanche was pretty or plain. That was a sad omission. I had
longed just to ask that simple question, or to imply it delicately and
diplomatically; but, I know not why, I never dared,--for Blanche would
have been sure to have read the letter; and what business was it of
mine? And if she was ugly, what question more awkward both to put and to
answer? Now, in childhood Blanche had just one of those faces that might
become very lovely in youth, and would yet quite justify the suspicion
that it might become gryphonesque, witch-like, and grim. Yes, Blanche,
it is perfectly true! If those large, serious black eyes took a fierce
light instead of a tender; if that nose, which seemed then undecided
whether to be straight or to be aquiline, arched off in the latter
direction, and assumed the martial, Roman, and imperative character of
Roland's manly proboscis; if that face, in childhood too thin, left
the blushes of youth to take refuge on two salient