Page:The Sea Lady.djvu/62

 insert a long impressive pause—"I never had a mother!"

"And then and there," said Mrs. Bunting, when she told the story to my cousin Melville, "the poor child burst into tears and confessed she had been born ages and ages ago in some dreadful miraculous way in some terrible place near Cyprus, and had no more right to a surname— Well, there—!" said Mrs. Bunting, telling the story to my cousin Melville and making the characteristic gesture with which she always passed over and disowned any indelicacy to which her thoughts might have tended. "And all the while speaking with such a nice accent and moving in such a ladylike way!"

"Of course," said my cousin Melville, "there are classes of people in whom one excuses—One must weigh"

"Precisely," said Mrs. Bunting. "And you see it seems she deliberately chose