Detective and mystery stories; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Missing persons -- Fiction
People complained that acquaintance made little way with her. That you
were, perhaps, well satisfied with your first day's progress, but the
next made no head-way; you found yourself this morning exactly at the
point from which you commenced yesterday, and to-morrow would recommence
where you started the day before. This is very disappointing, but may
sometimes be accounted for by there being nothing really to discover. It
seemed to me, however, that the distance had positively increased since
yesterday, and that the oftener she met me the more strange she became.
As we went out, Wylder enquired, with his usual good taste: 'Well, what
do you think of her?' Then he looked slily at me, laughing, with his
hands in his pockets. 'A little bit slow, eh?' he whispered, and laughed
again, and lounged into the hall. If Dorcas Brandon had been a plain
woman, I think she would have been voted an impertinent bore; but she was
so beautiful that she became an enigma. I looked at her as she stood
gravely gazing from the window. Is it Lady Macbeth? No; she never would
have had energy to plan her husband's career and manage that affair of
Duncan. A sultana rather--sublimely egotistical, without reverence--a
voluptuous and haughty embodiment of indifference. I paused, looking at a
picture, but thinking of her, and was surprised by her voice very near
me.
'Will you give me just a minute, Mr. De Cresseron, in the drawing-room,
while I show you a miniature? I want your opinion.'
So she floated on and I accompanied her.
'I think,' she said, 'you mentioned yesterday, that you remembered me
when an infant. You remember my poor mamma, don't you, very well?'
This was the first time she had yet shown any tendency, so far as I had
seen, to be interested in anything, or to talk to me. I seized the
occasion, and gave her, as well as I could, the sad and pretty picture
that remained, and always will, in the vacant air, when I think of her,
on the mysterious retina of memory.
How filmy they are! the moonlight shines through them, as through the
phantom Dane in Retzch's outlines--colour without substance. How they
come, wearing for ever the sweetest and pleasantest look of their earthly
days. Their sweetest and merriest tones hover musically in the distance;
how far away, how near to silence, yet how clear! And so it is with our
remembrance of the immortal part. It is the loveliest traits that remain
with us perennially; all that was noblest and most beautiful is there, in
a changeless and celestial shadow; and this is the resurrection of the
memory, the foretaste and image which the 'Faithful Creator' accords us
of the resurrection and glory to come--the body redeemed, the spirit made
perfect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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