She was one of those unfortunate women of a past generation, who, in offering no allurement to the masculine eye, appeared to defeat the single end for which woman was formed.

As her very right to existence lay in her possible power to attract, the denial of that power by nature, or the frustration of it by circumstances, had deprived her, almost from the cradle, of her only authoritative reason for being.

Her small, short-sighted eyes, below a false front which revealed rather than obscured her bare temples, flitted from object to object as though in the vain pursuit of some outside justification of her indelicacy in having permitted herself to be born.
"Samson tells me that my son has come, Molly," said Mrs.Gay, in a flutter of emotion.

"Have you had a glimpse of him yet ?" The girl nodded.

"He took supper at our house the night he got here." "It was such a surprise.