ave been extraordinary, but which,
to those who were present, excited no surprise; for she had scarcely,
during her life, ever kissed one of her own children. Nothing, indeed,
could exceed the tumultuous exultation of spirits with which they
received him, nor was honest Lindsay himself less joyously affected. Yet
it might be observed that there was a sparkle in the eye of his mother,
which was as singular as it was concentrated and intense. Such an
expression might be observed in a menagerie when a tigress, indolently
dallying with one of her cubs, exhibits, even in repose, those fiery
scintillations in the eye which startle the beholders. The light of that
eye, though intense, was cold, calculating, and disagreeable to look
upon. The frigidity of her manner and reception of him might, to a
certain extent, be accounted for from the fact that she had gone to his
uncle's several times for the purpose of seeing him, and watching his
interests. Let us not, therefore, impute to the coldness of her habits
any want of affection for him; on the contrary, his little finger was a
thousand times dearer to her than the bodies and souls of all her other
children, adding to them her husband himself, put together. Besides,
she was perfectly unsusceptible of emotions of tenderness, and,
consequently, a woman of powerful will, inflexible determination, and
the most inexorable resentments. She was also ambitious, as far as
she had scope for it, within her sphere of life, and would have been
painfully penurious in her family, were it not that the fiery resolution
of her husband, when excited by long and intolerable provocation, was at
all times able to subdue her--a superiority over her will and authority
which she never forgave him. In fact, she neither loved himself,
nor anything in common with him; and the natural affection which he
displayed on the return of her son was one reason why she received him
with such apparent indifference. To all the rest of the family she had a
heart of stone. Since her second marriage they had lost three children;
but, so far as she was concerned, each of them went down into a tearless
grave. She had once been handsome; but her beauty, like her son's, was
severe and disagreeable. There is, however, such a class of beauty, and
it is principally successful with men who have a penchant for overcoming
difficulties, because it is well known that the fact of conciliating or
subduing it is justly considered no ord