' Her father was a great reader of the best books, and he took
great pains that his children should form the same happy habit and should
carefully cultivate the same excellent taste. Her mother, while a
Christian gentlewoman of the first social standing, did not share her
husband's love of serious literature. She passed far too much of her
short lifetime among the romances of the day, till her daughter has to
confess that she took no little harm from the books that did her mother
no harm but pastime to read. As for other things, her father's house was
a perfect model of the very best morals and the very best manners. Alonso
de Cepeda was a well-born and a well-bred Spanish gentleman. He came of
an ancient and an illustrious Castilian stock; and, though not a rich
man, his household enjoyed all the nobility of breeding and all the
culture of mind and all the refinement of taste for which Spain was so
famous in that great age. All her days, and in all her ups and downs in
life, we continually trace back to Teresa's noble birth and noble
upbringing no little of her supreme stateliness of deportment and
serenity of manner and chivalry of character.
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