The age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1897-1902, 1897-08-29

S DIA1H'S 81 STORY. ;
Z By LUCE c. LITTLE. =
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Copyright, 1897. by the Author.l
By LUCE c. LITTLE.

copyright, 1897. by the Author.1
The picture hangs in one bend of the
wide hall at Blake House, SO that the
other day when my cousin Dorothea
Blake was married to her English lover
the eyes and lips of our greataunt SEEM
ed to be smiling wistful sort of assent.
Brilliant eyes they were-dark and lus-
trous and with fringe of curling lashes,
which lay ON such a cheek One hears
of ''smooth oval''-one can see it in
the portrait of Aunt Dolly's girlhood
Smooth and fair and peachlike, the
dainty red lips, proud and smiling,
bring just a suspicion of a dimple into
each check. The head is trifle on one
side, but Mistress Dorothea Leigh is
looking at you quite fearlessly, meeting
the glances of all posterity with be-
witching air and, as it were, constantly
asserting the superiority of her lowell
ness over that Of her descendants. When
the ceremony was over, Dolly-our Dol
ly-uodded prettily at the picture and
said TO us in her little daring way:
~ wcnder if she approved. But then
she had an English lover, and didn't
grandmamma always think she came
very near loving him?" The eyes in the
picture seemed to smile back. Mistress
Leigh wears dress of pale yellow silk
brocade. The Leigh diamonds are in a
little circlet around her slim whito
throat, and besides there is fine gold
chain from which hangs a closed locket.
When or how we got the notion I do
not know, but even as children we used
to say the locket held the portrait Of
"the English captain. -
Our Dolly told her husband about it
before they left us. and he said there
was a definite poetical justice in the
second Dorothea giving her heart to
England, and then Dolly, who was
growing bit mournful over the thought
of sailing away the next day, proposed
our getting out an old manuscript
the story our great-grandfather had
Robert Blake, Gent, who lived in this
very house in the year of our Lord
1889. Mistress Blake, his wife, was not
only noted for her beauty, but as well
for the wide tenderness of her charity.
Everywhere there are evidences of it,
and she was a woman who lived we'll in
all ways, fancy. Whether she prayed
or sang or ate or drank there was a
touch of doing what she did in the best
way and for the love of God, and pa
triotic though she was-and no woman
In all Berkshire was more so-every one
knew that she hated to hear the English
talked against. A curious fancy of her
life was this: On the annual Fourth
Of July dinner at Blake House, after
all the toasts were given, lovely Mrs.
Blake would rise, and, looking at her
husband with those tender, shining eyes
sof hers, she would say, Shall we drink
to the health of our English cousins
now, Robert?"
And the toast was given and drunk
with hearty fervor, in spite of Robert
Blake's Revolutionary fame, and there
were those who said that at such times
Mrs. Blake had q wistfulness in her
beauty not always seen there, but if her
husband saw it he adored her and un-
derstood every pulsation of her heart,
and loved her, doubt not, the better
for it.
We found the box easily enough with
the little faded manuscript in it and
read it aloud by the library fire, which
now and then cast CLEAN across the
picture in the hall, touching the old
time beauty of our ancestress with new
bewitchment. Here is the story just as
our great-Qrandfatler wrote it: