Every work that I took up had been written at least
fifteen or twenty years since. The prints hanging round the walls
(toward which I next looked) were all engraved from devotional
subjects by the old masters; the music-stand contained no music
of later date than the compositions of Haydn and Mozart. Whatever
I examined besides, told me, with the same consistency, the same
strange tale. The owner of these possessions lived in the by-gone
time; lived among old recollections and old associations--a
voluntary recluse from all that was connected with the passing
day. In Miss Welwyn's house, the stir, the tumult, the "idle
business" of the world evidently appealed in vain to sympathies
which grew no longer with the growing hour.
As these thoughts were passing through my mind, the door opened
and the lady herself appeared.
She looked certainly past the prime of life; longer past it, as I
afterward discovered, than she really was. But I never remember,
in any other face, to have seen so much of the better part of the
beauty of early womanhood still remaining, as I saw in hers.
Sorrow had evidently passed over the fair, calm countenance
before me, but had left resignation there as its only trace. Her
expression was still youthful--youthful in its kindness and its
candor especially. It was only when I looked at her hair, that
was now growing gray--at her wan, thin hands--at the faint lines
marked round her mouth--at the sad serenity of her eyes, that I
fairly detected the mark of age; and, more than that, the token
of some great grief, which had been conquered, but not banished.
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