An event occurred that hurried them on.  They received a visit from their mother’s brother, John Pierson, a Colonel of Uhlans, in the Imperial-Royal service.  He had rarely been in communication with them; his visit was unexpected.  His leave of absence from his quarters in Italy was not longer than a month, and he was on his way to Ireland, to settle family business; but he called, as he said, to make acquaintance with his nieces.  The ladies soon discovered, in spite of his foreign-cut chin and pronounced military habit of speech and bearing, that he was at heart fervidly British.  His age was about fifty:  a man of great force of shoulder and potent length of arm, courteous and well-bred in manner, he was altogether what is called a model of a cavalry officer.  Colonel Pierson paid very little attention to his brother-in-law, but the ladies were evidently much to his taste; and when he kissed Cornelia’s hand, his eyes grew soft, as at a recollection.

“You are what your mother once promised to be,” he said.  To her he gave that mother’s portrait, taking it solemnly from his breast-pocket, and attentively contemplating it before it left his hands.  The ladies pressed him for a thousand details of their mama’s youthful life; they found it a strange consolation to talk of her and image her like Cornelia.  The foreign halo about the Colonel had an effect on them that was almost like what nobility produces; and by degrees they heated their minds to conceive that they were consenting to an outrage on that mother’s memory, in countenancing Mrs. Chump’s transparent ambition to take her place, as they did by staying in the house with the woman.  The colonel’s few expressive glances at Mrs. Chump, and Mrs. Chump’s behaviour before the colonel, touched them with intense distaste for their present surly aspect of life.  Civilized little people are moved to fulfil their destinies and to write their histories as much by distaste as by appetite.  This fresh sentimental emotion, which led them to glorify their mother’s image in their hearts, heightened and gave an acid edge to their distaste for the think they saw.  Nor was it wonderful that Cornelia, said to be so like that mother, should think herself bound to accept the office of taking the initiative in a practical protest against the desecration of the name her mother had borne.  At times, I see that sentiment approaches too near the Holy of earthly Holies for us to laugh at it; it has too much truth in it to be denounced—­nay, if we are not alert and quick of wit, we shall be deceived by it, and wonder in the end, as the fool does, why heaven struck that final blow; concluding that it was but another whimsy of the Gods.  The ladies prayed to their mother.  They were indeed suffering vile torture.  Ethereal eyes might pardon the unconscious jugglery which made their hearts cry out to her that the step they were about to take was to save her children from seeming to acquiesce in a dishonour to her memory.  Some such words Adela’s tongue did not shrink from; and as it is a common habit for us to give to the objects we mentally address just as much brain as is wanted for the occasion, she is not to be held singular.