And from the day that I caught her beating Rubens for lying on the edge of her dress, I lived in terror of her.

Those rolling black eyes had not a pleasant look when the lady was out of temper.

And was she really to be the new mistress of the house?
To take the place of my fair, gentle, beautiful mother?
That wave of household gossip which for ever surges behind the master's back was always breaking over me now, in expressions of pity for the motherless child of "the dear lady dead and gone." "I don't like black hair," I announced one day at luncheon; "I like beautiful, shining, golden hair, like poor mamma's." "Don't talk nonsense, Reginald," said my father, angrily, and shortly afterwards I was dismissed to the nursery.
If I had only had my childish memory to trust to, I do not think that I could have kept so clear a remembrance of my mother as I had.

But in my father's dressing-room there hung a water-colour sketch of his young wife, with me--her first baby--on her lap.

It was a very happy portrait.