Was it possible, she thought, that the loud-voiced old lady, who used such dreadful grammar and called her _Rennet_, and the Aunt Lyddy Ann, who looked like a bar-maid, and the tall, showily-dressed Anna, with the yellow plume, the cheap lace scarf, and the loud hat, such as only the common girls of Paris wore—were really the relatives of her beautiful mother, who she had always supposed was an Englishwoman, and whom she had cherished in her heart as everything that was pure, and lovely, and refined! Her father had said of her once: “I never knew my wife to be guilty of a single unlady-like act, and I should be glad, my daughter, if you were half as gentle and gracious of manner as she was.” It is true she had never been able to learn anything definite of her mother’s family, for her father, when questioned, had either answered evasively, or not at all. Once he had said to her, decidedly: “There are reasons why I do not care to talk of your mother’s family and it is quite as well that you remain in ignorance. Mrs. Hetherton was everything that a perfect lady should be. You must be satisfied with that, and never trouble me again about your mother’s antecedents.” He had seemed very much excited, and there was a strange look on his face, as he walked the _salon_, which frightened Reinette a little; and still she persisted so far as to say: “I am sure mother was an Englishwoman, by her picture.” “Be satisfied then that you know so much, and don’t seek for more knowledge. Whatever her friends were, they are nothing to me; they can be nothing to you. So never mention them again.” And she never did; but she almost worshiped the beautiful face, which had been painted on ivory in Paris when her mother was a bride and had rooms at the Hotel Meurice. It was a fair, lovely face, with hair of golden brown, and great tender eyes of lustrous blue, with a tinge of sadness in them, as there was also in the expression around the sweet mouth just breaking into a smile. The dress was of heavy creamy satin, with pearls upon the neck and arms, and on the wavy hair. A refined aristocratic face, Reinette thought it, and in spite of her father’s evident dislike of her mother’s friends, she never for an instant had thought of them as other than fully her equals in position and social standing. Probably there had been some quarrel which had resulted in lasting enmity, or her mother might have been the daughter of some nobleman, and eloped with the young American, thus incurring the life-long displeasure of her family. This last was Reinette’s pet theory, and she had more than once resolved that when she was her own mistress she would seek her mother’s friends, never doubting that she should find them fully equal to the Hethertons, who, her father said, had in their veins the best blood of the land.