o way could her visitors give her more pleasure than by asking to see
this picture, and expressing their admiration of it. Then her poor,
disfigured face would look actually happy, and she would exclaim, "Was
she not beautiful?" "I do not think it flattered her, do you?" and with
other similar expressions indicate her sympathy with the admiration
expressed. The absence of anything like self-consciousness in the delight
she took in these tributes to the charms of her girlish self was pathetic
in its completeness. It was indeed not as herself, but as another, that
she thought of this fair girl, who had vanished from the earth, leaving a
picture as her sole memento. How, indeed, could it be otherwise when she
looked from the picture to the looking-glass, and contrasted the images?
She mourned for her girlish self, which had been so cruelly effaced from
the world of life, as for a person, near and precious to her beyond the
power of words to express, who had died.

From the time that she had first risen from the sick-bed, where she had
suffered so sad a transformation, nothing could induce her to put on the
brightly coloured gowns, beribboned, and ruffled, and gaily trimmed,
which she had worn as a girl; and as soon as she was able she carefully
folded and put them away in lavender, like relics of the dead. For
herself, she dressed henceforth in drab or black.

For three or four years she remained more or less an invalid. At the end
of that time she regained a fair measure of health, although she seemed
not likely ever to be strong.

In the meanwhile her school-mates and friends had pretty much all
married, or been given in marriage. She was a stranger to the new set of
young people which had come on the stage since her day, while her former
companions lived in a world of new interests, with which she had nothing
in common. Society, in reorganizing itself, had left her on the outside.
The present had moved on, leaving her behind with the past. She asked
nothing better. If she was nothing to the present, the present was still
less to her. As to society, her sensitiveness to the unpleasant
impression made by her personal appearance rendered social gatherings
distasteful to her, and she wore a heavy veil when she went to church.

She was an only child. Her mother had long been dead, and when about this
time her father died she was left without near kin. With no ties of
contemporary interest to hold her to the present she fel