Country homes -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Revenge -- Fiction
The young man and his friend were ushered into a seat confronting the
gallery. Lady Alice gazed and gazed transfixed with astonishment and
horror. The enamelled miniature on her bosom was like; but there, in
that clear, melancholy face, with its large eyes and wavy hair, was a
resurrection. In that animated sculpture were delicate tracings and
touches of nature's chisel, which the artist had failed to represent,
which even memory had neglected to fix, but which all now returned with
the startling sense of identity in a moment.
She had put on her gold spectacles, as she always did on taking her
seat, and opened her "Morning Service," bound in purple Russia, with its
golden clasp and long ribbons fringed with the same precious metal, with
the intent to mark the proper psalms and lessons at her haughty leisure.
She therefore saw the moving image of her dead son before her, with an
agonizing distinctness that told like a blight of palsy on her face.
She saw his elderly companion also distinctly. A round-shouldered man,
with his short caped cloak still on. A grave man, with a large, high,
bald forehead, a heavy, hooked nose, and great hanging moustache and
beard. A dead and ominous face enough, except for the piercing glance of
his full eyes, under very thick brows, and just the one you would have
chosen out of a thousand portraits, for a plotting high-priest or an old
magician.
This magus fixed his gaze on Lady Alice, not with an ostentation of
staring, but sternly from behind the dark embrasure of his brows; and
leaning a little sideways, whispered something in the ear of his young
companion, whose glance at the same moment was turned with a dark and
fixed interest upon the old lady.
It was a very determined stare on both sides, and of course ill-bred,
but mellowed by distance. The congregation were otherwise like other
country congregations, awaiting the offices of their pastor, decent,
listless, while this great stare was going on, so little becoming the
higher associations and solemn aspect of the place. It was, with all its
conventional screening, a fierce, desperate scrutiny, cutting the dim
air with a steady congreve fire that crossed and glared unintermittent
by the ears of deceased gentlemen in ruffs and grimy doublets, at their
posthumous devotions, and brazen knights praying on their backs, and
under the eyes of all the gorgeous saints, with glories round their
foreheads, in attitudes of benediction or meekness, who edified
believers from the eastern window.
Lady Alice drew back in her pew. Beatrix was in a young-lady reverie,
and did not observe what was going on. There was nothing indeed to make
it very conspicuous. But when she looked at Lady Alice, she was shocked
at her appearance, and instantly crossed, and said--
"I am afraid you are ill, grandmamma; shall we come away?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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