I felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me and tried to overcome it by attending to the words I heard. Then, very strangely, I seemed to hear them, not in the reader's voice, but in the well-remembered voice of my godmother. This made me think, did Lady Dedlock's face accidentally resemble my godmother's? It might be that it did, a little; but the expression was so different, and the stern decision which had worn into my godmother's face, like weather into rocks, was so completely wanting in the face before me that it could not be that resemblance which had struck me. Neither did I know the loftiness and haughtiness of Lady Dedlock's face, at all, in any one. And yet I--I, little Esther Summerson, the child who lived a life apart and on whose birthday there was no rejoicing--seemed to arise before my own eyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady, whom I not only entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I perfectly well knew I had never seen until that hour.

I tried to overcome this weakness by attending to the words I heard. Strangely, I seemed to hear them, not in the reader's voice, but in the well-remembered voice of my godmother. This made me think, did Lady Dedlock's face accidentally resemble my godmother's? Maybe it did, a little; but the expression was quite different, without the stern decision of my godmother's face. The loftiness and haughtiness of Lady Dedlock's face was unlike anyone I knew. And yet I - little Esther Summerson, the child who lived a life apart and on whose birthday there was no rejoicing - seemed to arise before my own eyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady, whom I had never seen until that hour.
