a beautiful woman is Speranza de Lara, one upon whom Dame Nature has showered her favours freely. As the stranger, looking upon her for the first time, would deem her but a girl in years, and exclaim admiringly at her beauty, it would be difficult to convince him that her age is thirty-five, as in effect it is.
Speranza’s eyes are blue, with the turquoise shade lighting up their clear depths, and a fringe of silky auburn eyelashes confining them within bounds. Her magnificent hair is of a slightly lighter hue, and as the sun plays on the heavy coil that is twisted gracefully upon her noble head, the golden sparks dance merrily around it, like an aureole of gold.
And the child? We must look nearer still at her, for she not only is beautiful, but there is writ upon her face the glowing sign of genius. Like her mother, Gloriana, or, as we shall prefer to call her, Gloria, has blue eyes, but they are the blue of the sapphire, deep in contradistinction to the turquoise shade, which characterises those of Speranza. Auburn eyelashes, too, fringe the child’s wonderful eyes, but again these are many shades darker than the mother’s, while masses of auburn curls play negligently and unconfined, covering the girl’s back like a veil of old-gold. Such is Gloriana de Lara at the age of twelve.
“Won’t Gloria tell mother what that ‘ever so much’ was?”
She puts the question gently, does Speranza. She has never moved from the position in which we first found her, and her eyes are still dreamily searching the waste of blue waters beyond. But as she speaks the child puts her arm caressingly through that of the mother’s, and lays her golden head against that mother’s shoulder.
“Ah! yes, mother, of course I will tell you.”
“Then tell me, Gloria.”
“I was imagining the foam flakelets to be girls, mother, and I looked upon them as my audience. I told them, mother darling, of all the wrongs that girls and women have to suffer, and then I bade them rise as one to right these wrongs. I told them all I could think of to show them how to do so, and then I told them that I would be their leader, and lead them to victory or die. And the wavelets shouted, mother. I seemed to hear them cheer me on, I seemed to see them rising into storm, the wind uprose them, and their white foam rushed towards me, and I seemed to see in this sudden change the elements of a great revolution.”
“Like a dream, Gloria.”
“A living dream, mother; at least it was so to me. It brought a feeling to my heart, mother, which I know will never leave it more, until, until”
The girl pauses, and the great tears rise to her eyes.
Speranza raises herself suddenly, and, confronting the child, lays both hands upon her shoulders .
“Until what, child?”
“Until I’ve won, mother,” cries Gloria, as she raises her glorious eyes, in which the tears still tremble, to her mother’s face.
“Ah, Gloria! the odds are against you, my darling.”
“Don’t I know that, mother; don’t I know that well? But I am not afraid. I made a vow, mother, today, I made it to those waves; and something tells me that I shall keep that vow and win, though in doing so I may die.”
“Hush, Gloria, hush, child; don’t talk like that.”
“And don’t you want me to win, mother? After all you have suffered, after all you have taught me, would you have your child turn back from the path she has set herself to follow, because perhaps at that path’s end lies death?”
“Child, it is a cause I would gladly lay down my life for, but how can I bring myself to wish you to sacrifice yourself?”
“What is sacrifice in a great cause, mother? I fear no sacrifice, no pain, no consequence, so long as victory crowns me in the end.”
The mother’s arms are round her child’s neck now, her head is bending down and the bright gold of Speranza’s lovely hair is close beside the glossy, wandering dark gold curls of Gloria. In the heart of the former a new-born hope is rising, vague, undefinable, yet still there, and which fills it with a happiness she has not known for many and many a day.
“My child,” she exclaims softly, “can it be, that after all these years of weary, lonely suffering, I am awaking to find in you, you, the offspring of a forbidden love, the messenger that shall awake the world to woman’s wrongs, and make suffering such as I have endured no longer possible?”
“Yes, mother, I feel it,” answers Gloria earnestly; “and that is why I have made my plans today. Everything must have a beginning you know, mother, and therefore I must begin, and begin at once. You must help me, mother darling. I can do nothing without your cooperation.”
“Tell me your plans, Gloria, and mother will help you if she can.”
“My plans are many, but the first must have a premier consideration. Mother, I must go to school.”
“To school, child! I thought you always have begged me not to send you to school.”
“It must.be to a boy’s school, mother. You must send me to Eton.”
“To Eton?”
“Yes, mother; don’t you understand?”
Here a retrospect is necessary to enable the reader to comprehend the above conversation.
Thirty-five years previously there had been born to a young widow in the Midland Counties of England a posthumous child and daughter, to whom the name of Speranza had been given. The widow, Mrs. de Lara by name, was left badly off. Her husband, who had been an officer in the British service, had sold out, and accepted an estate agency from a rich relative, upon whose property he lived in a tiny but snug cottage, which nestled amidst some pine and oak woods on the shores of as beautiful a lake as was to be seen all the country round. Captain and Mrs. de Lara were a very happy pair. Theirs had been a love match; and she never regretted the rich offers of marriage which she had rejected for the sake of the handsome, dashing but well-nigh penniless young officer. Her father, furious at what he considered a mesalliance, had cut her off with a shilling; and thus it was that the two had had a hard struggle to make ends meet on the little possessed by the captain. What mattered it? They were happy.
Grief, however, soon came to cloud that home of peace and contentment. An accidental discharge of his gun inflicted on Captain de Lara a mortal wound. He died in the arms of his heart-broken wife, who lived just long enough to give birth to the little Speranza, dying a fortnight later, and leaving, penniless and friendless, two little boys and the baby girl referred to. the captain’s rich relative adopted them. He was a kind-hearted man, and felt that he could not turn them adrift on the world, but his wife, a hard-hearted and scheming woman, resented the adoption bitterly, and led the children a sad and unhappy life. She had a sou and daughter of her own, aged respectively five and six years, and upon these she lavished a false and mistaken affection, spoiling them in every possible way, and bringing them up to be anything but pleasant to those around them.
When old enough Speranza’s brothers were sent to school, and given to understand by their adopted father that they might choose their own professions. The eldest selected the army, the youngest the navy, and each made a start in his respective line of life. But Speranza, being a girl, had no chances thrown out to her. She was a very beautiful girl, strong, healthy, and clever; but of what use were any of these attributes to her?
“If
