“Yes, I know—_Aleeth_. It’s a pretty name, and she is pretty, too,” Paul
said, admiring the picture, whose large brown eyes looked at him as
steadily and intelligently as if they were living eyes and could read
his thoughts.
Some of the great-grandmother’s French blood had been transmitted to her
descendant, who showed it in her features and in the pose of her head,
covered with short curls, which made her look younger than she was. The
nose was slightly retroussé and the mouth rather wide, but taken as a
whole the face was charming. The dress was countrified and
old-fashioned, and you knew at a glance that the artist was countrified,
too, and not at all like the one to whom Clarice had sat. Every curve
and line of her graceful figure showed to advantage, while Elithe’s
position was cramped and awkward. Her hands were placed just where they
looked large and stiff. Her boots, which showed under her short dress,
were square-toed instead of pointed like those of Clarice, who was
standing with her hands behind her in an attitude “for all the world
like a play-actor,” Miss Hansford thought, mentally giving the
preference to Elithe. Unconsciously Paul did the same. He did not think
of Elithe’s boots or dress or hands. He saw only the lovely face, which
held and mastered him with a power he could not define.
“Elithe,” he said, as if speaking to her in the flesh. “I know you are a
nice girl with no nonsense in you.” Then to Miss Hansford: “Why don’t
you have her come here to visit you?”
“It’s too expensive, for I should have to pay carfare both ways,” Miss
Hansford replied; “and then she can’t be spared. There’s four more
children, all boys,—little savages, I dare say. Lucy is weakly and the
brunt of everything falls on Elithe, who works like a dog.”
“More reason why she should have an outing. Poor little Elithe! Let’s
see how she’d look beside Clarice,” Paul said, and slipping his own
picture from the case, he put Elithe’s in its place side by side with
the proud beauty who seemed to look with disdain upon her humble
neighbor.
Elithe, however, did not lose by the comparison. She only represented a
different type of girlhood, and most people would have looked at her
first and longest.
“They are both beauties and no mistake,” Paul said, following Miss
Hansford into the sitting room, where she heard a blind banging. “Keep
them here, where you can see them every day,” he continued, placing them
on the mantel with Miss Hansford’s Bible and hymn book and spectacle
case, a card of sea mosses, a conch shell and a plaster bust of John
Wesley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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