Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/304

 opposite wing, looking straight across the court, was a lighted room with a long French window opening directly on the shaven turf, and in the center of this window there sat in a high, carved chair a very old woman. She was carefully dressed in deep black, with pure white ruffles at her neck and around her shrunken wrists, and a lace cap on her thin, white hair. Her feet were on a carved foot-stool, and a quaint silver lamp, set on a slender table at her side, threw a stream of light across the court. Her face, lined with countless wrinkles, was bent upon a large book in her lap; from its pages she read in a low, steady voice—the passionless, almost terrifying voice of great and weary age:

"Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hast formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God."

Caroline stared, fascinated, down the path of lamplight. It marked a bed of yellow tulips with a broad band; they stood motionless, as if carved in ivory.