Lady Sarah

“ You are giving yourself a great deal of trouble, and courting very proud and very disagreeable people, for what you very probably won't get; and you are grieved to think that Lady Sarah does not treat us so kindly as she might do. But don't be unhappy: don't court those proud people any more: you have enough to live upon as you used to do; and Lady Sarah will be kinder to us by-and-bye. ”

“ Lady Sarah, however, had left it, for Frances only turned from Grace to encounter her. "I do believe your lost bracelet is in the room," she whispered, in agitation. "I think I have seen it."
"Impossible!" responded Lady Sarah Hope.
"It looks exactly the same; gold links interspersed with diamonds: and the clasp is the same; three stars. A tall, ugly woman has it on, her black hair strained off her face." For, it should be remarked en passant, that such was not the fashion then.
"So very trying for plain people!" remarked Lady Sarah, carelessly. "Where is she?" ”

“ It was Lady Sarah’s face but through my filmy pupils it loomed vague and indefinite like the harvest moon in a fog. Then my vision cleared.
[142] “You?” I questioned.
She smiled and placed a finger on her lips with the familiar nurse’s gesture.
“Sh ... you must not talk.” She wore the conventional nursing costume in which all women look well. As she turned to busy herself professionally with a tray of medicine bottles a mounting tide of color suffused her cheeks spreading to the ears and neck until they were a rich mahogany. Blessed creature! She too had suffered during her vigil. ”

“ Why, Sarah, life itself would be a burthen to me. Upon my word," growing more and more in earnest every moment—"Upon my word, I believe I should hang myself! And how you can bear it—you, with a nature so gentle and so affectionate, and so—I declare to you"—
"Pray don't speak so loud, my love. The people that are going by the window stop and look up towards the house. And what will the Peabodys think?"
"What do I care! Let them think what they please. Am I to regulate the affairs of my household by what a neighbor may happen to think, hey? ”

“ Sarah stared down at her dress, still speechless with amazement and delight.
"And now the red dress. Your brother William chose this color, Sarah, and your hat and coat match it."
Fat and silent Albert opened his mouth to speak.
"She looks like—" he began, but could think of nothing to which to compare her. "She don't look like nothing."
"She looks like a—a fine lady," said Louisa Ellen. "Ach, when can we go to the Normal?"
Laura had turned down the glass in the old-fashioned bureau. ”

“ Sarah was introduced into the best society and the highest circles, thanks to the letters of recommendation and considerate patronage of the English "ambassador's" lady and the old Marquis d'Harville, who had known Tom and Sarah's father in England.
Persons of deceitful, calculating, and cold dispositions acquire with great facility language and manners quite in opposition to their natural character, as with them all is outside, surface, appearance, varnish, bark; or they soon find that, if their real characters are detected, they are undone ”

“ Some coquet attempts, which Lady Sarah afterwards made to recover his notice, and her stooping to bear the Queen’s train as bridemaid, did her more prejudice than all that was invented against her. Pique and extreme youth might excuse both; and her soon after preferring a clergyman’s son to several great matches, gave evidence that ambition was not a rooted passion in her.
In my own opinion, the King had thoughts of her as a wife; but wanted resolution to oppose his mother and Lord Bute. ”

“ Ellis, which naturally pleased her mistress, Lady James, very much.
Mrs. Brown had been steadily getting weaker and weaker, till one day when Sarah was, as usual, washing up, the footman came to tell her that she was wanted in the servants' hall. She was surprised at this summons, and still more so when she found Dick waiting for her, especially as she had seen him only a week ago.
"Well, Dick, whatever is the matter?" asked Sarah. "Why do you look so sad? ”

“ Instinctively Sarah realized why once, when they had been going to the seaside for a fortnight, her father had said, "No, no, not Brighton," when that town was suggested; and as instinctively she kept the recollection to herself.
"And then there's Polly--your Aunt Mary, Sarah! She's the fine lady of the family--very 'aughty, she is, though her and me 'as always been very good friends, always. Still, she's uncommon 'aughty, and maybe she 'as a right, for she married a gentleman in the City, and keeps her carriage and pair and a footman, too. Ah, well! she 'asn't a family, 'asn't Mrs. ”

“ She'd have liked to live at Balmoral,' replied Sarah.
'She's a good young lady, Miss Sarah, and, if you'll excuse me, she's done the master a mint of good. It's what he wants, some one to say a word in season, and make him a little softer like,' said Luke Mickleroyd.
'You're all alike, Luke; you think there's no one like Horatia Cunningham, and I can't think why except that she has a pleasant way of saying things,' said Sarah a little bitterly.
'It isn't only that, miss; it's that she's got a lot of heart. But I know you've got a heart too, and a heart of gold ”

“ She's taken after you, like me.' The young man smiled at his mother in a very pretty way. He certainly had beautiful manners, as his mother said. 'But as for being clever,' he continued, 'I call her a proud peacock.'
'Oh George, I was never as good-lookin' as Sairey, nor you either; nor 'alf such a lady. W'y, she might be a duchess's daughter! Every one says so,' cried his mother, woman-like, dwelling upon the subject of good looks rather than on her son's criticism of Sarah's cleverness. ”

“ But her aunt, Mrs. Stubbs, was proud enough and elated enough for a dozen violin-players, and she stood beside Sarah, explaining who she was and how she was going to have lessons from the best master they could get, until Mrs. George felt sick to think that her grand friends should know "that dreadful woman" was a relation of hers.
"Sarah, my dear, Lady Golladay wishes you to play again. Something pathetic."
So Sarah tuned up again, and Mrs. Stubbs was silent.
"She can't talk when the child is playing," murmured Mrs. George to her husband. ”

“ Can you help me?" "You are a brave child!" the violin-master cried; "and God has given you the rarest of all good gifts--a grateful heart. I think I can help you; I think so. Only this morning I had a letter from a friend who is arranging a concert tour; he has first-rate artistes, and he wants a lady violinist."
"Me!" cried Sarah excitedly.
"But," said the maestro, raising his hand, "he does not give much money."
"But it would be a beginning," she broke in.
"He gives six pounds a week."
"I'll go!" Sarah cried. ”

“ He's the one who'll make the visit a failure, if it is one. Well, she's going to come, so it's no use groaning about it now,' said Sarah.
'Now, Sally, what are you looking so glum about? I suppose you don't think we're grand enough for your duchess-friend? Never you mind, we'll put our best foot forward. She shall have the royal suite of rooms. I've made up my mind to do the thing handsome,' said Mr Clay.
'Oh Mark, that is good o' you! I 'ope the young lady won't spoil 'em,' said his wife. ”

“ I pointed. “’Tis the Nile, O, my beloved.”
“My Antony!” ... she scarcely breathed the name. She was really wonderful in her way of catching the spirit and elevation of the moment; her early education must have been thorough.
Our last day’s march was through fields of Egyptian cotton and Lady Sarah made a remark that startled me. ”

“ She soon received a letter from Lady James telling her that she had a friend who was going to Ireland, and being badly in want of a kitchen-maid had promised to take Sarah if she did not mind going so far off. Of course Sarah was only too delighted to go anywhere, not liking to be idle longer than was necessary, and really she had been so happy in her experience of service that she was quite anxious to begin work again. She went to see Mrs. Sinclair, who was a bright fashionable lady, but very unlike Lady James. ”

“ Holy, simple, and beautiful in its construction, is the emblem of all we can imagine of fidelity and truth, is the blessed tie whose value we feel in the cradle, and whose loss we lament on the verge of the very grave, where our mother moulders in dust and ashes. In all our trials, amid all our afflictions, she is our friend: let the world forsake us, she is still by our side; if we sin, she reproves more in sorrow than in anger, nor can she tear us from her bosom, nor forget we are her child. ”

“ Young Sarah was tremendously high-spirited and constantly in trouble. The nuns were always sending despairing reports to her mother.
Once, during a presentation of prizes, she pretended to faint and acted the part so realistically that even the Superior was deceived and believed her pupil to be dead. It gave her such a shock that the poor lady was ill for days. Sarah was sent to her bedroom in disgrace.
“I spent the time reading forbidden books and eating bonbons that the concierge had smuggled in to me,” she said, in telling me the story. ”

“ Surely it was not to paint a bit of stuff, or a knot of riband that God has endowed us with a talent of creation only secondary to his own great power; for I too can give life to that world of beauty, and when it shall have ceased to exist, it will survive on my canvass.”
“I no longer wonder that I was told to beware of Titian,” said the Duchess, as she gradually obeyed the painter’s directions; “our great Ariosto is not the only flatterer at our court.” ”

“ She weeps not that he was born, but that he dies; weeps as passionately as the parent who loses the most beautiful, the most gifted offspring: perhaps more so than if he had been beautiful and gifted, for then he would not have been exclusively dependant on her love and care. Is it not right there should be a source in the desert as well as in the valley? Blessed is the illusion the mother’s heart lends to her eyes! ”

“ Why not, when the day is at the hottest, step leisurely in like a water-nymph, bathe head and face, nestle gradually beneath the rippling waves, and dabble with their smooth resistance for twenty minutes at least, emerging with limbs pliant and strengthened? ”

“ Joy paints with its own colours every act and thought. The happy do not feel poverty, for delight is a gold tissued robe, and crowns them with priceless gems. Enjoyment plays the cook to their homely fare, and mingles intoxication with their simple drink. ”

“ My honour required what was done; my will is a law which it is your part to respect: to be silent is your duty; and there are many persons for whom I have no more regard than for yourself, who would do well to learn how to conduct themselves towards their equals, before they venture to make more disturbances than is requisite.
“Know further, Monsieur le Cardinal, that Christina is a Queen, wherever she may chance to reside; and in whatever place it is her pleasure to live, the persons who surround her, cheats, though they may be, are better than you and your confederates. ”

“ Strange but beautiful is the strength of maternal affection. This object to all others so hideous—that for earth to hide his deformity, for death to close upon his afflictions, seems a boon to be prayed for, a mercy to be acknowledged with thankfulness—in the eyes of his mother is one of hope and of interest as great as the most perfect. ”

“ By the honour, virtue, and maternal affection of thy great Queen,
Whose numerous offspring are so dear to her; the miserable wife of thy prisoner beseeches thee to save her husband’s life, and restore him to her arms. ”

“ Those who rail at poetry and refinement as superfluous ingredients in every day happiness, little know what main props they thus seek to undermine. These will abide when even principles wave. Manly delicacy is as necessary in family life as manly rectitude; and womanly tact as womanly virtue. There is as much happiness wrecked from the absence of the one, as of the other, and perhaps more. Those who neglect the varnishes of life, commit an insidious sin towards themselves: and these lie in the mind, and not in the purse. ”

“ I feel too surely his icy hand upon me; my sight grows dim; I can scarcely discern even you."
"Sarah!" cried the prince, chafing her damp, cold hands with his. "Take courage, she will soon be here; she cannot delay much longer!"
"The Almighty has not deemed me worthy of so great a consolation as the presence of my child!"
"Hark, Sarah! Methinks I hear the sound of wheels. Yes, 'tis she,—your daughter comes!" [Pg 151]
"Promise me, Rodolph, she shall never know the unnatural conduct of her wretched but repentant mother," murmured the countess, in almost inarticulate accents. ”

“ There is no blessing more utterly valueless when its first charm has passed over and faded from the imagination, than mere personal beauty; where there is no intellect, no heart, no sweetness of temper, no cheering gaiety of spirit, no genius, talent, nor precious moral worth to enclose and preserve it from wearying the sense, and palling the affection. ”

“ Man may persecute, sickness may change, grief may depress, poverty may chill, or grief may blacken the heart of the parent, but the bonds of the child are never loosened.
The affection of a child for a parent, in its strongest degree does not amount to a hundredth part of that which a parent feels for a child; and it is not until the child becomes a parent, that he is aware of this. ”