Pierson paid very little attention to his brother-in-law, but the ladies
were evidently much to his taste; and when he kissed Cornelia's hand, his
eyes grew soft, as at a recollection.

"You are what your mother once promised to be," he said. To her he gave
that mother's portrait, taking it solemnly from his breast-pocket, and
attentively contemplating it before it left his hands. The ladies
pressed him for a thousand details of their mama's youthful life; they
found it a strange consolation to talk of her and image her like
Cornelia. The foreign halo about the Colonel had an effect on them that
was almost like what nobility produces; and by degrees they heated their
minds to conceive that they were consenting to an outrage on that
mother's memory, in countenancing Mrs. Chump's transparent ambition to
take her place, as they did by staying in the house with the woman. The
colonel's few expressive glances at Mrs. Chump, and Mrs. Chump's
behaviour before the colonel, touched them with intense distaste for
their present surly aspect of life. Civilized little people are moved to
fulfil their destinies and to write their histories as much by distaste
as by appetite. This fresh sentimental emotion, which led them to
glorify their mother's image in their hearts, heightened and gave an acid
edge to their distaste for the think they saw. Nor was it wonderful that
Cornelia, said to be so like that mother, should think herself bound to
accept the office of taking the initiative in a practical protest against
the desecration of the name her mother had borne. At times, I see that
sentiment approaches too near the Holy of earthly Holies for us to laugh
at it; it has too much truth in it to be denounced--nay, if we are not
alert and quick of wit, we shall be deceived by it, and wonder in the
end, as the fool does, why heaven struck that final blow; concluding that
it was but another whimsy of the Gods. The ladies prayed to their
mother. They were indeed suffering vile torture. Ethereal eyes might