Many smiling faces and graceful figures glided past me, but the smiles were lavished on other eyes, the figures sustained by other hands than mine.

I turned away tantalized, left the dancers, and wandered into the oak-panelled dining-room.

No fibre of sympathy united me to any living thing in this house; I looked for and found my mother's picture.

I took a wax taper from a stand, and held it up.

I gazed long, earnestly; my heart grew to the image.
My mother, I perceived, had bequeathed to me much of her features and countenance--her forehead, her eyes, her complexion.