faces, thought what was there
she could learn from these children? It was too late to learn from them;
each could approach her father fearlessly, and put up her lips to meet
the ready kiss, and wind her arm about the neck that bent down to caress
her. She could not begin by being so bold. Oh! could it be that there
was less and less hope as she studied more and more!
She remembered well, that even the old woman who had robbed her when
a little child--whose image and whose house, and all she had said and
done, were stamped upon her recollection, with the enduring sharpness
of a fearful impression made at that early period of life--had spoken
fondly of her daughter, and how terribly even she had cried out in the
pain of hopeless separation from her child But her own mother, she
would think again, when she recalled this, had loved her well. Then,
sometimes, when her thoughts reverted swiftly to the void between
herself and her father, Florence would tremble, and the tears would
start upon her face, as she pictured to herself her mother living on,
and coming also to dislike her, because of her wanting the unknown grace
that should conciliate that father naturally, and had never done so
from her cradle She knew that this imagination did wrong to her mother's
memory, and had no truth in it, or base to rest upon; and yet she tried
so hard to justify him, and to find the whole blame in herself, that she
could not resist its passing, like a wild cloud, through the distance of
her mind.
There came among the other visitors, soon after Florence, one beautiful
girl, three or four years younger than she, who was an orphan child, and
who was accompanied by her aunt, a grey-haired lady, who spoke much to
Florence, and who greatly liked (but that they all did) to hear her sing
of an evening, and would always sit near her at that time, with motherly
interest. They had only been two days in the house, when Florence, being
in an arbour in the garden one warm morning, musingly observant of a
youthful group upon the turf, through some intervening boughs,--and
wreathing flowers for the head of one little creature among them who was
the pet and plaything of the rest, heard this same lady and her niece,
in pacing up and down a sheltered nook close by, speak of herself.
'Is Florence an orphan like me, aunt?' said the child.
'No, my love. She has no mother, but her father is living.'
'Is she in mourning for her poor Mama, now?' inquired
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