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.  Miss Vanstone had already reached the first maturity of womanhood; she had completed her six-and-twentieth year.  Inheriting the dark majestic character of her mother’s beauty, she had yet hardly inherited all its charms.  Though the shape of her face was the same, the features were scarcely so delicate, their proportion was scarcely so true.  She was not so tall.  She had the dark-brown eyes of her mother—­full and soft, with the steady luster in them which Mrs. Vanstone’s eyes had lost—­and yet there was less interest, less refinement and depth of feeling in her expression:  it was gentle and feminine, but clouded by a certain quiet reserve, from which her mother’s face was free.  If we dare to look closely enough, may we not observe that the moral force of character and the higher intellectual capacities in parents seem often to wear out mysteriously in the course of transmission to children?  In these days of insidious nervous exhaustion and subtly-spreading nervous malady, is it not possible that the same rule may apply, less rarely than we are willing to admit, to the bodily gifts as well?

The mother and daughter slowly descended the stairs together—­the first dressed in dark brown, with an Indian shawl thrown over her shoulders; the second more simply attired in black, with a plain collar and cuffs, and a dark orange-colored ribbon over the bosom of her dress.  As they crossed the hall and entered the breakfast-room, Miss Vanstone was full of the all-absorbing subject of the last night’s concert.

“I am so sorry, mamma, you were not with us,” she said.  “You have been so strong and so well ever since last summer—­you have felt so many years younger, as you said yourself—­that I am sure the exertion would not have been too much for you.”

“Perhaps not, my love—­but it was as well to keep on the safe side.”

“Quite as well,” remarked Miss Garth, appearing at the breakfast-room door.  “Look at Norah (good-morning, my dear)—­look, I say, at Norah.  A perfect wreck; a living proof of your wisdom and mine in staying at home.  The vile gas, the foul air, the late hours—­what can you expect?  She’s not made of iron, and she suffers accordingly.  No, my dear, you needn’t deny it.  I see you’ve got a headache.”

Norah’s dark, handsome face brightened into a smile—­then lightly clouded again with its accustomed quiet reserve.

“A very little headache; not half enough to make me regret the concert,” she said, and walked away by herself to the window.