to pay him, and he saw it had been not mere deference but respect, as
though he had been a man in miniature, and one to whom, despite his
tender youth, dignity and reason should be qualities of nature, and
therefore might be demanded from him in all things. As early as thought
began to form itself clearly in him, he singled out Mistress Halsell as
a person to reflect upon. When he was too young to know wherefore, he
comprehended vaguely that she was of a world to which the rest of his
attendants did not belong. 'Twas not that she was of greatly superior
education and manners, since all those who waited upon him had been
carefully chosen; 'twas that she seemed to love him more gravely than
did the others, and to mean a deeper thing when she called him "my lord
Marquess." She was a pock-marked woman (she having taken the disease
from her late husband the Chaplain, who had died of that scourge), and
in her earliest bloom could have been but plainly favoured. She had a
large-boned frame, and but for a good and serious carriage would have
seemed awkward. She had, however, the good fortune to be the possessor
of a mellow voice, and to have clear grey eyes, set well and deep in
her head, and full of earnest meaning.

"Her I shall always remember," the young Marquess often said when he
had grown to be a man and was Duke, and had wife and children of his
own. "I loved to sit upon her knee, and lean against her breast, and
gaze up into her eyes. 'Twas my child-fancy that there was deep within
them something like a star, and when I gazed at it, I felt a kind of
loving awe such as grew within me when I lay and looked up at a star in
the sky."

His mother's eyes were of so dark a violet that 'twas his fancy of them
that they looked like the velvet of a purple pansy. Her complexion was
of roses and lilies, and had in truth by nature that sweet bloom which