Page:Villette (1st edition).djvu/365

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AULD LANG SYNE.
13

prove on the curve of that mouth, or of the chin; even my ignorance knew that both were beautiful, and pondered, perplexed over this doubt: "How it was that what charmed so much, could at the same time so keenly pain?" Once, byway of test, I took little Missy Home, and, lifting her in my arms, told her to look at the picture.

"Do you like it, Polly?" I asked. She never answered, but gazed long, and at last a darkness went trembling through her sensitive eye, as she said, "Put me down." So I put her down, saying to myself: "The child feels it too."

All these things did I now think over, adding, "He had his faults, yet scarce ever was a finer nature; liberal, suave, impressible." My reflections closed in an audibly pronounced word, "Graham!"

"Graham!" echoed a sudden voice at the bedside. "Do you want Graham?"

I looked. The plot was but thickening; the wonder but culminating. If it was strange to see that well-remembered pictured form on the wall, still stranger was it to turn and behold the equally well-remembered living form opposite— a woman, a lady, most real and substantial, tall, well-attired,