stormily angry for a moment and easily appeased. My mother was the
second daughter in a large family, in a family that grew more numerous
as pounds grew fewer, and she was adopted by a maiden aunt, a quaint
memory of whom came through my mother's childhood into mine, and had
its moulding effect on both our characters. This maiden aunt was, as
are most Irish folk of decayed families, very proud of her family tree
with its roots in the inevitable "kings." Her particular kings were the
"seven kings of France"--the "Milesian kings"--and the tree grew up a
parchment, in all its impressive majesty, over the mantelpiece of their
descendant's modest drawing-room. This heraldic monster was regarded
with deep respect by child Emily, a respect in no wise deserved, I
venture to suppose, by the disreputable royalties of whom she was a
fortunately distant twig. Chased out of France, doubtless for cause
shown, they had come over the sea to Ireland, and there continued their
reckless plundering lives. But so strangely turns the wheel of time
that these ill-doing and barbarous scamps became a kind of moral
thermometer in the home of the gentle Irish lady in the early half of
the present century. For my mother has told me that when she had
committed some act of childish naughtiness, her aunt would say, looking
gravely over her spectacles at the small culprit, "Emily, your conduct
is unworthy of the descendant of the seven kings of France." And Emily,
with her sweet grey Irish eyes and her curling masses of raven black
hair, would cry in penitent shame over her unworthiness, with some
vague idea that those royal, and to her very real, ancestors would
despise her small, sweet, rosebud self, so wholly unworthy of their
disreputable majesties.

Thus those shadowy forms influenced her in childhood, and exercised
over her a power that made her shrink from aught that was unworthy,
petty or mean. To her the lightest breath of dishonour was to be