nce, as she
first entered the room; for, ever since, Green had stood between them
so that she could not see. When she did behold him fully, however,
she gazed upon him earnestly, clasping her hands, and exclaiming, "Is
it--is it possible?"
The next moment her feelings seemed to overpower her--"Oh yes, yes,"
she cried, advancing "it is he himself--the same dear, blessed
likeness of the dead!" and casting her arms round the young
gentleman's neck, she wept long and profusely on his bosom.
Wilton was surprised and agitated, as may well be conceived. He was
not sufficiently ignorant of the world not to know that there are a
thousand tricks and artifices daily practised, which assume such
appearances as the scene now performing before him displayed. He
might, indeed, have entertained suspicions of all sorts of
transformations and disguises; but there was an earnestness, a truth,
in the lady's manner that was in itself convincing, and there was
something more, also--there was a most extraordinary resemblance in
her whole face and person to the picture which we have before
mentioned in the house of the Earl of Sunbury. The features were the
same, the height, the figure: the eyes were the same colour, there was
the same peculiar expression about the mouth, and the only difference
seemed to be the difference of age. The picture represented a girl of
eighteen or nineteen: the person who stood beside him must have seen
well nigh forty summers.
Though the likeness was complete, there was a certain difference.
Have we not all beheld a beautiful scene spread out in the morning
light, full of radiance, and sparkling, and glorious sunshine? and
have we not seen a grey cloud creep over the sky, leaving the
landscape the same, but taking from it the resplendent beams in
which it shone at first? So did it seem with her. All appeared the
same as in the bright being whom the painter had depicted in her gay
day of youth; but that Time had since brought, as it were, a grey
shadow over the loveliness which it could not take away.
All these things took from Wilton every doubt; and after he had
suffered the lady for a moment to give way to her feelings without a
word: even throwing his arm slightly round her, and pressing her
towards him, he said, "Are you--are you my mother?"
"Alas! no, my dear boy," she replied, raising her head and wiping
away the tears, while the colour rose slightly in her cheek. "I am
not your mother, but one who has loved you scarcely less than ever
mot