but her form, of
uncommon height, gaunt, bony, and masculine, was firm and erect as in
the vigour of life, and in perfect keeping with the hard-featured,
deep-lined countenance, surmounted by a coiffure that, perched on the
summit of a roll of grizzled hair, strained tight from the high and
narrow forehead, was, with the rest of her attire, a facsimile of that
of my great-aunt Barbara (peace be to her memory!) as depicted in a
certain invaluable portrait of that virtuous gentlewoman, now deposited,
for more inviolable security, in the warmest corner of the lumber-room.

Though no believer in the influence of "the evil eye," there was
something in the expression of the large, prominent, light grey orbs, so
strangely fixed upon me, that had the effect of troubling me so far, as
to impose a degree of embarrassment and restraint on my endeavours to
play the courteous hostess, and very much to impede all my attempts at
conversation.

As the likeliest means of breaking down the barrier of formality, I
introduced the subject most calculated, it might be supposed, to awaken
feelings of mutual interest. I spoke of my maternal ancestry--of the
Norman blood and Norman land from which the race had sprung, and of my
inherited love for the birthplace of those nearest and dearest to me in
the last departed generation; though the daughter of an English father,
his country was my native, as well as my "Father-land."

Mrs Ormond, though the widow of an English husband, spoke with a foreign
accent so familiar to my ear, that, in spite of the sharp thin tones of
the voice that uttered them, I could have fancied musical, had there
been a gleam of kindness in her steady gaze. But I courted it in vain.
The eyes of Freya were never fixed in more stony hardness on a rejected
votary, than were those of my stern inspectress on my almost deprecating
face; and her ungracious reserve baffled all my attempts at
conversation.

All she allowed to escape her, in reference to the Norman branches of
our respective families, was a brief allusion to the intimacy which had
subsisted between her mother and my maternal grandmother; and when I
endeavoured from that slight clue to lead her farther into the family
relations, my harmless pertinacity was rebuked by a shake of the head as
portentous as Lord Burleigh's, accompanied by so grim a smile, and a
look of such undefinable meaning, as put the finishing-stroke to my
previous bewilderment, and prevented me