And then she drew in suddenly, as if stung by some random thought, and shut the window.

A picture hung over her mantelpiece--a portrait of her mother, who had been a country beauty in her time.

She glanced at it, and then at the looking-glass.

Would she have given her fifty thousand pounds to have exchanged her face for such a face as that?
She caught up her little Thomas a Kempis, marked through and through with lines and references, and sat and read steadfastly for an hour and more.

That was her school, as it has been the school of many a noble soul.