n. After our brief separation even, her
loveliness struck me afresh. How beautiful she was! not with the white
radiance of Evelyn, but lovely as a young May rose, blushing among its
leaves and peerless in grace, sweetness, and expression. She had her
sainted mother's great blue, soulful eyes, with finer features and more
brilliant coloring, and her father's gleaming teeth and clustering hair,
"brown in the shadow, gold in the sun," falling, like his, over a brow
of sculptured ivory. I was not alone in my appreciation of her
loveliness. It was a theme of universal remark. Even Mr. Bainrothe, who
could never forgive my father for having married his children's
governess, confessed that she had the "air noble," which he valued far
above beauty. "And where she got it from, Miriam, is sufficiently
plain," he said, one day, glancing at me with undisguised admiration as
he spoke. "Her mother was simple and unpretending enough, Heaven above
knows, but you Monforts, and you, especially, Miriam, are truly
_distingue_, which is a word that cannot often be justly applied in any
land to man or woman either."

"By-the-by, Miriam," he continued, "you are growing into a very
beautiful woman, after a somewhat unpromising childhood. You surpass
Evelyn as rubies do garnets, or diamonds _aqua marine_, or sapphires the
opaque turquoise. You do, indeed, my dear," and he attempted to take my
hand in the old fashion. I murmured something indicative of my
disapprobation.

"It is an exquisite hand!" he remarked, as I coldly drew it away; "I
have an artist's eye, and can admire beauty in the abstract, even though
I am an old man, you know."

"Admire it also at a distance, I beg, hereafter," I said, bowing coldly,
smiling very bitterly, I fear, with lips white with anger and disgust.

"Those scars, Miriam!" he went on, as if unobservant of my manner, yet
with the old sarcastic gleam in his eyes, in the most audacious way,
"have nearly disappeared, have they not? I think I understood so from
Dr. Pemberton. Let me see that on your arm, my dear," and he extended
his hand to grasp it.

"They are indelible, Mr. Bainrothe," I replied, folding my arms tightly
above my heart, "as are some other impressions; never allude to them
again, I request you. It offends me." And I left him, coldly and
abruptly.

I give this little scene only as a specimen of his occasional behavior
at this period, and of the humiliation to which his presence so often
subject