As she seemed ever
to be ripening, so she seemed never to have been a child, but, with
faculties and sense clear and unintimidated, she was never wanting in
modesty, nor accused of want of self-possession. Judge Custis made her
his reliance and pride; she never reproved his errors, nor treated them
familiarly, but settled the household by a consent which all paid to her
character alone. More than once she had appeared at the furnace mansion
when the Judge's long absence had awakened some jealousy or distrust:
"Father, please go home with me! I want you to drive me back."
The easy, self-indulgent Judge would look a slight protest, but at the
soft, spirited command; "Come, sir! you can't stay here any more,"
dismissed his companions, and took his place at the head of Princess
Anne society.
Vesta was almost a brunette, with the rich colors of her type--eyebrows
like the raven's wing, ripe, red lips, and hair whose darkness and
length, released from the crown into which she wound it, might have spun
her garments. Her eyes were of a steel-blue, in which the lights had the
effect of black. She was dark with sky breaking through, like the rich
dusk and twilights over the Chesapeake.
People wondered that, with such beauty, ease, and accomplishments she
was not proud; but her pride was too ethereal to be seen. It was not the
vain consciousness of gifts and endowments, but the serene sense of
worthiness, of unimpaired health, honor, and descent, which made her
kind and thoughtful to a degree only less than piety.
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