Loyella (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Constance had bowed her head, innocent with the trusting innocence of childhood; and so the spirit of art had early fallen upon her, touching every fibre of her being and raising her soul upwards towards its own immortality. To-day there stood by her side a child who, walking in her paths, picked up the flowers which she strewed about for its pleasure and her own satisfaction. Violet was a golden-haired, blue-eyed child, who might have been a type for one of Correggio's angels, so pure she seemed and beautiful to look upon. There was something spiritual about her, and yet?she was only little Violet, who walked, and talked, and lived as other children live, neither worse nor better than they; except for the great love she bore a woman whom all Bay-Hilton despised. Violet had never asked whether Mrs. Grant's ancestors came in with the Conqueror, or where the missing husband lay, living or dead. Poor little child ! she was innocent yet, and sadly lacking the good moral training which so many of the Bay-Hilton mothers wished it lay in their power to give her. "Such a sweet face!" they said, in their generous desire not to visit the sins of the parent upon the child; " just like a little angel; poor dear thing! so sad." But what was " so sad" or wherein Violet was " poor" society wisely did not specify. It only performed a moral duty in pitying the outcast child who may have had manufactory dust sprinkled on its brow, the scarsof factory wheels across its mother's hands, or, worse still, the black stain of account books over its father's name. Nevertheless, as these new comers were undeniably men and brothers, " people " were in Christian charity bound to pity them for all shortcomings in the matter of birth and family. And this they did most liberally. For the rest?God help them sh...