Have you not sometimes seen, upon the bosom of dark, stagnant waters,
a pure, white water-lily lift up its head, breathing there a fresh and
delicate fragrance, and deriving its existence thence--yet partaking
in nothing of the loathsome nature of the pool, nor ever sullied by
its close contact with the foul element beneath?

It is an honest simile to say that the gentle Anne Carr resembled
that sweet water-lily. Sprung from the guilty loves of the favourite
Somerset and his beautiful but infamous wife, she was herself pure and
untainted by the dark and criminal dispositions of her parents. Not
even a suspicion of their real character had ever crossed her mind;
she knew that they had met with some reverse of fortune,--for she
had heard her father regret, for her sake, his altered estate. She
knew this, but nothing more: her father's enemies, who would gladly
have added to his wretchedness, by making his child look upon him
with horror, could not find in their hearts, when they gazed on her
innocent face, to make one so unoffending wretched. It is a lovely
blindness in a child to have no discernment of a parent's faultiness;
and so it happened that the Lady Anne saw nothing in her father's mien
or manner, betokening a sinful, worthless character.

Of her mother she had but few and faint recollections. Memory pictured
her pale and drooping, nay gradually sinking under the cureless malady
which brought her to her grave at last. She remembered, however,
the soft and beautiful smiles which had beamed over that haggard
countenance, when it was turned upon her only child--smiles which she
delighted to recognise in the lovely portrait, from which her idea of
her mother was chiefly formed. This portrait adorned her own favourite
apartment. It had been painted when the original was as young and
happy as herself; and her filial love and fond imagination believed no