Giovanna gazed at her for a moment, still bewildered. Then she rose and looked at herself in the old glass, which distorted that beautiful face a little. “I am glad you find me pretty,” she said. “My face! it is not a white and red moon, like Gertrude’s, who is always praised and spoiled; but I hope it may do more for me than hers has done yet. That is what I intend. My poor pretty face--that it may win fortune yet! my face or my boy.” Miss Susan, her passion dying out, stood and looked at this unknown creature with dismay. Her face or her boy!--what did she mean? or was there any meaning at all in these wild words--words that might be mere folly and vanity, and indeed resembled that more than anything else. Perhaps, after all, she was but a fool who required a little firmness of treatment--nothing more. CHAPTER XXV. Miss Susan Austin was not altogether devoid in ordinary circumstances of one very common feminine weakness to which independent women are especially liable. She had the old-fashioned prejudice that it was a good thing to “consult a man” upon points of difficulty which occurred in her life. The process of consulting, indeed, was apt to be a peculiar one. If he distinctly disagreed with herself, Miss Susan set the man whom she consulted down as a fool, or next to a fool, and took her own way, and said nothing about the consultation. But when by chance he happened to agree with her, then she made great capital of his opinion, and announced it everywhere as the cause of her own action, whatever that might be. Everard, before his departure, had been the depositary of her confidence on most occasions, and as he was very amenable to her influence, and readily saw things in the light which she wished him to see them in, he had been very useful to her, or so at least she said; and the idea of sending for Everard, who had just returned from the West Indies, occurred to her almost in spite of herself, when this new crisis happened at Whiteladies. The idea came into her mind, but next moment she shivered at the thought, and turned from it mentally as though it had stung her. What could she say to Everard to account for the effect Giovanna produced upon her--the half terror, half hatred, which filled her mind toward the new-comer, and the curious mixture of fright and repugnance with which even the child seemed to regard its mother? How could she explain all this to him? She had so long given him credit for understanding everything, that she had come to believe in this marvellous power and discrimination with which she had herself endowed him; and now she shrank from permitting Everard even to see the infliction to which she had exposed herself, and the terrible burden she had brought upon the house. He could not understand--and yet who could tell that he might not understand? see through her trouble, and perceive that some reason must exist for such a thraldom? If he, or any one else,