With
so many women religion is a substitute for something else; with Miriam
Ogilvie everything else was made as nearly and as beautifully as it
could be made a substitute for religion. Mark was intensely aware of her
holiness, but he was equally aware of her capable well-tended hands and
of her chatelaine glittering in and out of a lawn apron. One tress of
her abundant hair was grey, which stood out against the dark background
of the rest and gave her a serene purity, an austere strength, but yet
like a nun's coif seemed to make the face beneath more youthful, and
like a cavalier's plume more debonair. She could not have been over
thirty-five when Mark first knew her, perhaps not so much; but he
thought of her as ageless in the way a child thinks of its mother, and
if any woman should ever be able to be to him something of what his
mother had been, Mark thought that Miss Ogilvie might.
Esther Ogilvie the other sister was twenty-five. She told Mark this
when he imitated the villagers by addressing her as Miss Essie and she
ordered him to call her Esther. He might have supposed from this that
she intended to confer upon him a measure of friendliness, even of
sisterly affection; but on the contrary she either ignored him
altogether or gave him the impression that she considered his frequent
visits to Meade Cantorum a nuisance.
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