“I cannot say; his little arm was struck, and when I went to pick him up, he lay back in my lap and moaned till I thought my heart would break. But that was not the worst that happened. As we went hurrying up the walk to find the child’s father, we were met by a woman wrapped in a black cloak whose long and greasy folds seemed like the symbol of her own untold depravity. Her glance as she encountered the child writhing in pain at my feet, made my heart stand still. It was more than malignant, it was actually fiendish. ‘Is he hurt?’ she asked, and it seemed as if she gloated over the question; she evidently longed to hear that he was, longed to be told that he would die; and when I inquired if she was his mother, she broke into a string of laughter, that seemed to darken the daylight. ‘His mother! O yes, we look alike, don’t we!’ she exclaimed, pointing with a mocking gesture frightful to see, first at his eyes which were very blue and beautiful, and then at her own which were dark as evil thoughts could make them. I never saw anything so dreadful. Malignancy! and towards a little lame child! what could be more horrible!”
Mr. Sylvester and his wife exchanged looks, then the former asked, “Did she follow you, Paula?”
“No; after telling me that I—But I cannot repeat what she said,” exclaimed the young girl with a quick shudder. “Since I came home,” she musingly continued, “I have looked and looked at my face in the glass, but I cannot believe that what she declared is true. There is no similarity between us, could never have been any: I will not have it that she ever saw in all the days of her life such a picture as that in her glass.” And with a sudden gesture Paula started up and pointed to herself as she stood reflected in one of the tall mirrors with which Ona’s boudoir abounded.
“And did she dare to make any comparison between you and her own degraded self?” exclaimed Mr. Sylvester, with a glance at the exquisite vision of pure girlhood thus doubly presented to his notice.