Page:Rebecca.pdf/5

184 feature was sharp, the forehead was sunken, and the cheek was so white that it was undistinguishable from the pillow on which it lay. Even in sleep the cold damp stood on the brow, and the breath was drawn with an effort. She let the curtain fall, but softly; and left the room for her own. There she gave way; and the wrung hand, the deep sob, betrayed without relieving the passion of grief. Rebecca was an only and an orphan child, and her father had idolised her with a twofold fondness. He loved in her both her mother and herself; and the love was the deeper, because that on it rested the tenderness of the grave. Each felt they had the place of another to supply. Clinton was of an old but decayed family; he had lost the wreck of his property by fighting for the Stuarts, and the Restoration brought only those unfulfilled hopes which seem sent but to make disappointment more bitter. To an aged servant, who had lived beneath his roof in better days, he owed his present asylum; she had been left housekeeper at the manor while its proprietor was abroad, and three rooms were made serviceable to her old master and his daughter. Rebecca was now about twenty; and from her mother, a converted Jewess, she inherited that Oriental style of beauty which enables us to comprehend the similes of the Eastern poets. Truly had she the dark full eye of the gazelle, the grace of the young cedar, and a blush coloured from the earliest rose in Sharon. She was impetuous