All these changes Sebastian Dundas found to have taken place when he returned to North Aston with gray hair instead of brown, his smooth, fair skin tanned and roughened, and his weak, finely-cut, effeminate mouth hidden by a moustache of a reddish tint, mingled with white.  Still, he was Sebastian; and after the first shock of his altered appearance had been got over, Josephine carried her incense in the old way, and found her worship as dear and as tantalizing as ever.

Lastly, as the crowning change of all, Leam came home from school; no longer the arrogant, embittered child, looking at life through the false medium of pride and ignorance, saying rude things and doing odd ones with the most perfect unconsciousness; but well-bred, graceful, sufficiently instructed not to make patent mistakes, and more beautiful by far than she had even promised to be.  Her very eyes were lovelier, lovely as they had always been:  they had more variety of expression, were more dewy and tender, and, if less tragic, were more spiritual.  That hard, dry, burning passion which had devoured her of old time seemed to have gone, as also her savage Spanish pride.  She had rounded and softened in body too, as in mind.  Her skin was fairer; her lips were not so firmly closed, so rigid in line, so constricted in motion; her brows were more flexible and not so often knit together; and her slight, lithe figure was perfect in line and movement.  Still, she had enough of her former manner of being for identity.  Grave, quiet, laconic, direct, she was but a modification of the former Leam as they had known her—­Leam, Pepita’s daughter, and with blood in her veins that was not the ordinary blood of the ordinary British miss.

Her father’s artistic perceptions were gratified as he met her at the station and Leam turned her cheek to him voluntarily with tears in her eyes.  Turning her cheek was apparently her idea of kissing; but if not too intense an expression of affection, it was at least an improvement on the old hard repulsion, and Sebastian accepted it as the concession it was meant to be.  Indeed, they met somewhat as foes reconciled, or rather seeking to be reconciled, and Mr. Dundas did not wish to keep open old sores.  Her cheek, turned to him somewhere about the ear, represented to his mind a peace-offering:  her eyes full of tears were as a confession of past sins and a promise of amendment.  Not that he understood why she was so much more effusive than of old, but if it augured a happier life together, he was glad.

As they drove up to the door of the old home, crowded with memories and associations, a shudder passed over the girl:  she grasped her father’s hand in her own almost convulsively, and he heard her say below her breath, “Poor papa!”