activity, of her warm heart and sweet temper,--and in many a little home
picture presented her image where I would fain have placed it, not
"crystal seeing," but joining my mother in charitable visits to the
village, instructing the young and tending on the old, or teaching
herself to illuminate, from an old missal in my father's collection, that
she might surprise my uncle with a new genealogical table, with all
shields and quarterings, blazoned or, sable, and argent; or flitting
round my father where he sat, and watching when he looked round for some
book he was too lazy to rise for. Blanche had made a new catalogue and
got it by heart, and knew at once from what corner of the Heraclea to
summon the ghost. On all these little traits had my mother been
eulogistically minute; but somehow or other she had never said, at least
for the last two years, whether Blanche was pretty or plain. That was a
sad omission. I had longed just to ask that simple question, or to imply
it delicately and diplomatically; but, I know not why, I never dared,--
for Blanche would have been sure to have read the letter; and what
business was it of mine? And if she was ugly, what question more awkward
both to put and to answer? Now, in childhood Blanche had just one of
those faces that might become very lovely in youth, and would yet quite
justify the suspicion that it might become gryphonesque, witch-like, and
grim. Yes, Blanche, it is perfectly true! If those large, serious black
eyes took a fierce light instead of a tender; if that nose, which seemed
then undecided whether to be straight or to be aquiline, arched off in
the latter direction, and assumed the martial, Roman, and imperative
character of Roland's manly proboscis; if that face, in childhood too
thin, left the blushes of youth to take refuge on two salient peaks by
the temples (Cumberland air, too, is famous for the growth of the
cheekbone!),--if all that should happen, and it very well might, then, O
Blanche, I wish thou hadst never written me those letters; and I might
have done wiser things than steel my heart so obdurately to pretty Ellen