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Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
page 27 of 1030 (02%)
"Mamma, mamma, pray come here!" said Gwendolen, Mrs. Davilow having
followed slowly in talk with the housekeeper. "Here is an organ. I will be
Saint Cecilia: some one shall paint me as Saint Cecilia. Jocosa (this was
her name for Miss Merry), let down my hair. See, mamma?"

She had thrown off her hat and gloves, and seated herself before the organ
in an admirable pose, looking upward; while the submissive and sad Jocosa
took out the one comb which fastened the coil of hair, and then shook out
the mass till it fell in a smooth light-brown stream far below its owner's
slim waist.

Mrs. Davilow smiled and said, "A charming picture, my dear!" not
indifferent to the display of her pet, even in the presence of a
housekeeper. Gwendolen rose and laughed with delight. All this seemed
quite to the purpose on entering a new house which was so excellent a
background.

"What a queer, quaint, picturesque room!" she went on, looking about her.
"I like these old embroidered chairs, and the garlands on the wainscot,
and the pictures that may be anything. That one with the ribs--nothing but
ribs and darkness--I should think that is Spanish, mamma."

"Oh, Gwendolen!" said the small Isabel, in a tone of astonishment, while
she held open a hinged panel of the wainscot at the other end of the room.

Every one, Gwendolen first, went to look. The opened panel had disclosed
the picture of an upturned dead face, from which an obscure figure seemed
to be fleeing with outstretched arms. "How horrible!" said Mrs. Davilow,
with a look of mere disgust; but Gwendolen shuddered silently, and Isabel,
a plain and altogether inconvenient child with an alarming memory, said--
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