She must at any rate have been remarkably beautiful, and how wonderfully
her delicately chiselled features had retained a charm which is usually
peculiar to youth! how well the now dull gold of her thick tresses
harmonized with the faint flush on the almost unwrinkled face! and how
dignified was the bearing of her figure, still slender, in spite of her
matronly increase in flesh!

No wonder that she had once fired the heart of his distinguished father!
Now--that sunny glance could not deceive Barbara--now her appearance had
ceased to be unpleasant to him; nay, perhaps even pleased him. And now
she could bear it no longer; from the inmost depths of her heart rose the
cry: "John, my child! My dear, dear son!"

Again, with the speed of lightning, the question darted through Don
John's mind: "Is this the woman whose voice, I was told, offended the
ear? Spiteful, base slander!" How fervent, how gentle, how full of
tender affection her cry had sounded! Not even from the lips of Doha
Magdalena, his much-loved "Tia," had his own name ever echoed so
musically as from those of yonder woman, whom he had just shrunk from
meeting as though it were an inevitable misfortune.

Shame, regret, love, seethed hotly within him. It was long since he had
felt emotion like that which mastered him when her tearful eyes again met
his, and now, in the enthusiastic soul of this favourite of fortune,
whose lofty flight neither glory, nor fame, nor disappointment could
paralyze, in the bosom of this good, high-minded young human being
stirred the consciousness that a great new happiness was in store for
him, and from his lips rang the cry for which Barbara had waited so long
with vain yearning, "Mother!" and again "Mother!"