othed and amused me. I began to find a kind
of transcendental good sense in her remarks, and her unfathomable good
nature moved me to admiration and envy. The liking was returned; she
enjoyed my presence half-unconsciously, as a man in deep meditation may
enjoy the babbling of a brook. I can scarce say she brightened when I
came, for satisfaction was written on her face eternally, as on some
foolish statue's; but I was made conscious of her pleasure by some more
intimate communication than the sight. And one day, as I set within
reach of her on the marble step, she suddenly shot forth one of her hands
and patted mine. The thing was done, and she was back in her accustomed
attitude, before my mind had received intelligence of the caress; and
when I turned to look her in the face I could perceive no answerable
sentiment. It was plain she attached no moment to the act, and I blamed
myself for my own more uneasy consciousness.

The sight and (if I may so call it) the acquaintance of the mother
confirmed the view I had already taken of the son. The family blood had
been impoverished, perhaps by long inbreeding, which I knew to be a
common error among the proud and the exclusive. No decline, indeed, was
to be traced in the body, which had been handed down unimpaired in
shapeliness and strength; and the faces of to-day were struck as sharply
from the mint, as the face of two centuries ago that smiled upon me from
the portrait. But the intelligence (that more precious heirloom) was
degenerate; the treasure of ancestral memory ran low; and it had required
the potent, plebeian crossing of a muleteer or mountain contrabandista to
raise, what approached hebetude in the mother, into the active oddity of
the son. Yet of the two, it was the mother I preferred. Of Felipe,
vengeful and placable, full of starts and shyings, inconstant as a hare,
I could even conceive as a creature possibly noxious. Of the mother I
had no thoughts but those of kindness. And indeed, as spectators are apt
ignorantly to take sides, I grew something of a partisan in the enmity
which I perceived to smoulder between them. True, it seemed mostly on
the mother's part. She would sometimes draw in her breath as he came
near, and the pupils of her vacant eyes would contract as if with horror
or fear. Her emotions, such as they were, were much upon the surface and
readily shared; and this latent repulsion occupied my mind, and kept me
wondering on what