Theodore Winthrop

“ She did not perceive — for she looked thither no more — that by her violent movement she had broken the cord, and let down one fall of the curtain, at the top, so that there was space for the heads of the soldier and his white horse to appear.
There those heads wait, as if at a window. There they seem, horse and man, to watch for their moment to spring into that dusky room, lit by the flashes of a dying fire. ”

“ But obedience is still a piety with Lucy. Mute mental protests against injustice do not train the will. It must win strength by struggles. Her will has sunk into chronic inertia. She suffers now for her weakness, as if it were a crime. ”

“ How majestic her strong, straight nose, her full chin, her vigorous color, her daring eyes, her brow of command, and her black hair dressed, after a mode of the day, in a tower, and falling in masses on the neck! More flesh and more color would have made her coarse. ”

“ Peace! As if in answer, at a flash of firelight, the mother’s face glared out fierce and cruel. Sternness, but no peace there!
Lucy turned, and took refuge with the personages of the picture.
“You,” she addressed them in mute appeal, “are a world nearer my heart than this unmotherly woman beside me. O chivalric gentleman! O benign lady! encourage and sustain me! My heart will break with these doubts and plots and perils.”
The two ladies sat silent by the firelight. The guests were noisy, two doors off. ”

“ They were alone; unless the spirit of the first Edwin Brothertoft was looking at them from Vandyck’s portrait on the wall.
That wonderful picture hung in its old place. More than a century, now, it had been silently watching the fortunes of the family.
No Provincial daubs had ventured within sight of this masterpiece. Each successive Brothertoft was always proud to know that his face, at its best, was his ancestor’s repeated. Each descendant said, “Vandyck painted us, once for all, in the person of our forefather. ”