Silas Bradford's Boy by Joseph C. Lincoln

At three o'clock the next afternoon Mrs. Elijah Truman, in the second-floor sitting room of the big house on the Old Ostable Road, was reclining in an easy-chair, pampering a slight headache and listening to her granddaughter, Elizabeth Cartwright, who was reading aloud. The novel Miss Cartwright was reading was one of half a dozen which the Boston bookseller, who knew Mrs. Truman's taste in literature, had sent down. It was a romance just then receiving considerable attention by newspaper reviewers. The majority of Denboro would have considered it decidedly daring.

Mrs. Truman was wearing an elaborate negligee. Her brown hair was carefully waved and arranged. The jewels in her ears and upon her soft plump fingers were expensive. Her stockings--she had always been proud of her ankles--were of fine silk. There were tiny wrinkles about her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, but her cheeks were smooth and rosy. She did not look her age, nor did she intend to look it. It was one of her possessions of which she was not proud.