little resemblance to her
son.

Her features were slightly aquiline,--the eyebrows of that arch which
gives a certain majesty to the aspect; the lines round the mouth were
habitually rigid and compressed. Her face was that of one who had gone
through great emotion and subdued it. There was something formal,
and even ascetic, in the character of her beauty, which was still
considerable, in her air and in her dress. She might have suggested
to you the idea of some Gothic baroness of old, half chatelaine,
half-abbess; you would see at a glance that she did not live in the
light world around her, and disdained its fashion and its mode of
thought; yet with all this rigidity it was still the face of the woman
who has known human ties and human affections. And now, as she gazed
long on Harley's quiet, saddened brow, it was the face of a mother.

"A single grave," she said, after a long pause. "And you were then but
a boy, Harley! Can such a memory influence you even to this day? It is
scarcely possible: it does not seem to me within the realities of man's
life,--though it might be of woman's."

"I believe," said Harley, half soliloquizing, "that I have a great deal
of the woman in me. Perhaps men who live much alone, and care not for
men's objects, do grow tenacious of impressions, as your sex does. But
oh," he cried, aloud, and with a sudden change of countenance, "oh, the
hardest and the coldest man would have felt as I do, had he known HER,
had he loved HER. She was like no other woman I have ever met. Bright
and glorious creature of another sphere! She descended on this earth and
darkened it when she passed away. It is no use striving. Mother, I have
as much courage as our steel-clad fathers ever had. I have dared in
battle and in deserts, against man and the wild beast, against the storm
and the ocean, against the rude powers of Nature,--dangers as dread as
ever pilgrim or Crusader rejoiced to brave. But courage against that one
memory! no, I have none!"

"Harley, Harley, you break my heart!" cried the countess, clasping her
hands.

"It is astonishing," continued her son, so rapt in his own thoughts that
he did not, perhaps, hear her outcry. "Yea, verily, it is astonishing,
that considering the thousands of women I have seen and spoken with, I
never see a face like hers,--never hear a voice so sweet. And all this
universe of life cannot afford me one look and one tone that can restore
me to man's privilege,--love.