But her beauty as a young woman had passed beyond the average national limits; and she still preserved the advantage of her more exceptional personal gifts.

Although she was now in her forty-fourth year; although she had been tried, in bygone times, by the premature loss of more than one of her children, and by long attacks of illness which had followed those bereavements of former years--she still preserved the fair proportion and subtle delicacy of feature, once associated with the all-adorning brightness and freshness of beauty, which had left her never to return.

Her eldest child, now descending the stairs by her side, was the mirror in which she could look back and see again the reflection of her own youth.

There, folded thick on the daughter's head, lay the massive dark hair, which, on the mother's, was fast turning gray.

There, in the daughter's cheek, glowed the lovely dusky red which had faded from the mother's to bloom again no more.