eated 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.

"Open that drawer," said he, as she came to i