“But you are not an old woman, grandmother.”
Nor was she. In spite of her seventy-five years she stood erect at the side of her grand-daughter. Her abundant hair was partly gray, but the gray mingled with the little oval of costly lace that lay upon it, and the effect was soft and fair as powdering. She had been very handsome, and her beauty lingered as the beauty of some flowers linger, in fainter tints and in less firm outlines; for she had never fallen from that “grace of God vouchsafed to children,” and therefore she had kept not only the enthusiasms of her youth, but that sweet promise of the “times of restitution” when the child shall die one hundred years old, because the child-heart shall be kept in all its freshness and trust. Yes, in Rachel Rawdon’s heart the well-springs of love and life lay too deep for the frosts of age to touch. She would be eternally young before she grew old.
She sat down as Ethel spoke, and drew the girl to her side. “I hear your friend is going to marry,” she said.
“Dora? Yes.”
“Are you sorry?”
“Perhaps not. Dora has been a care to me for four years. I hope her husband may manage her as well as I have done.”
“Are you afraid he will not?”
“I cannot tell, grandmother. I see all Dora’s faults. Mr. Stanhope is certain that she has no faults. Hitherto she has had her own way in everything. Excepting myself, no one has ventured to contradict her. But, then, Dora is over head and ears in love, and love, it is said, makes all things easy to bear and to do.”
“One thing, girls, amazes me—it is how readily women go to church and promise to love, honor, and obey their husbands, when they never intend to do anything of the kind.”
“There is a still more amazing thing, Madam,” answered Ruth; “that is that men should be so foolish as to think, or hope, they perhaps might do so.”
“Old-fashioned women used to manage it some way or other, Ruth. But the old-fashioned woman was a very soft-hearted creature, and, maybe, it was just as well that she was.”
“But
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