Her mother, Mrs. Bletchley (who was present), was a Spanish
Jewess--a most magnificent and beautiful old person in splendid
attire, tall and straight, with white hair and thick black eyebrows,
and large eyes as black as night.

In Leah the high Sephardic Jewish type was more marked than in Mrs.
Gibson (who was not Jewish at all in aspect, and took after her
father, the late Mr. Bletchley).

It is a type that sometimes, just now and again, can be so
pathetically noble and beautiful in a woman, so suggestive of
chastity and the most passionate love combined--love conjugal and
filial and maternal--love that implies all the big practical
obligations and responsibilities of human life, that the mere term
"Jewess" (and especially its French equivalent) brings to my mind
some vague, mysterious, exotically poetic image of all I love best
in woman. I find myself dreaming of Rebecca of York, as I used to
dream of her in the English class at Brossard's, where I so pitied
poor Ivanhoe for his misplaced constancy.

If Rebecca at fifty-five, was at all like Mrs. Bletchley, poor old
Sir Wilfred's regrets must have been all that Thackeray made them
out to be in his immortal story of _Rebecca and Rowena_.

Mr. Gibson was a good-looking man, some twelve or fifteen years
older than his wife; his real vocation was to be a low comedian;
this showed itself on my first introduction to him. He informally
winked at me and said:

"Esker voo ker jer dwaw lah vee? Ah! kel Bonnure!"

This idiotic speech (all the French he knew) was delivered in so
droll and natural a manner that I took to him at once. Barty himself
couldn't have been funnier!

Well, we had games of forfeits and danced, and Ida played charming
things by Mendelssohn on the piano, and Leah sang very nicely in a
fine, bold, frank, deep voice, like a choir-boy's, and Mrs. Gibson
danced a Spanish fandango, and displayed feet and ankles of which
she was very proud, and had every right to be; and then Mr. Gibson
played a solo on the flute, and sang "My Pretty Jane"--both badly
enough to be very funny without any conscious effort or straining on
his part. Then we supped, and the food was good, and we were all
very jolly indeed; and after supper Mr. Gibson said to me:

"Now, Mister Parleyvoo--can't _you_ do something to amuse the
company? You're _big_ enough!"

I professed my willingness to do _anything_--and wished I was as
Barty more than ever!

"Well, then," says he--"kne