To other eyes she might, in her bright spring-time, seem lovely as an
angel from heaven, but to him no more such visions were to be
vouchsafed.
If beauty really went on decaying, as the ancients say, by this time
there could be no beauty left. But oh! greybeard, the beauty remains,
though our eyes may be too dim to see it; the beauty, the grace, the
rippling laughter, and the saucy smiles, which once had power to stir to
their very depths our hearts, friend--our hearts, yours and mine,
comrade, feeble, and cold, and pulseless now.
2. THE CORONER'S INQUEST
The story was told to me afterwards, but I may as well weave it in with
mine at this juncture.
From the maternal ancestress, the Demoiselles Blake inherited a certain
amount of money. It was through no fault of the paternal Blake--through
no want of endeavours on his part to make ducks and drakes of all
fortune which came in his way, that their small inheritance remained
intact; but the fortune was so willed that neither the girls nor he
could divert the peaceful tenure of its half-yearly dividends.
The mother died first, and the father followed her ere long, and then
the young ladies found themselves orphans, and the possessors of a fixed
income of one hundred and thirty pounds a year.
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