All her friends, as I have heard, were
disappointed when she married Mr. Welwyn, rich as he was; and
were afterward astonished to find her preserving the appearance,
at least, of being perfectly happy with a husband who, neither in
mind nor heart, was worthy of her.
It was generally supposed (and I have no doubt correctly) that
she found her great happiness and her great consolation in her
little girl Ida--now the lady from whom we have just parted. The
child took after her mother from the first--inheriting her
mother's fondness for books, her mother's love of music, her
mother's quick sensibilities, and, more than all, her mother's
quiet firmness, patience, and loving kindness of disposition.
From Ida's earliest years, Mrs. Welwyn undertook the whole
superintendence of her education. The two were hardly ever
apart, within doors or without. Neighbors and friends said that
the little girl was being brought up too fancifully, and was not
enough among other children, was sadly neglected as to all
reasonable and practical teaching, and was perilously encouraged
in those dreamy and imaginative tendencies of which she had
naturally more than her due share. There was, perhaps, some truth
in this; and there might have been still more, if Ida had
possessed an ordinary character, or had been reserved for an
ordinary destiny. But she was a strange child from the first, and
a strange future was in store for her.
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