erving the strip
of paper beneath it from contact with the dust, bands of white traversed
the faint discoloration which time had worked upon the outermost
envelopes--mutely witnessing to the long years that had passed away
since the letters had been penned in the first rapturous glow of hot
young love.

Slowly, with a rather wistful sense of regret that it must needs be
done, Sara dropped them one by one, unread, into the fire, and watched
them flare up with a sudden spurt of flame, then curl and shrivel into
dead, grey ash--those last links with the romance of his youth which
Patrick had treasured so long and faithfully.

She wondered what manner of woman her mother could have been to inspire
so great a love that even her own unfaith had failed to sour it.
Her childish recollection, blurred by the passage of years, was of a
white-faced, rather haggard-looking woman with deep-set, haunted
eyes and a bitter mouth, but whose rare smile, when it came, was so
enchanting that it wiped out, for the moment, all remembrance of the
harsh lines which hardened her face when in repose.

With eager hands the girl picked up the little velvet case that held the
miniature, and snapped open the lid. The painting within, rimmed in old
paste, was of a girl in her early twenties. The face was oval, with a
small, pointed chin and a vivid red mouth, curling up at the corners.
There was little colour in the cheeks, and the black hair and
extraordinarily dark eyes served to enhance the creamy pallor of the
skin. It was not altogether an English face; the cheek-bones were too
high, and there was a definiteness of colouring, a decisive sharpness
of outline in the piquant features, not often found in a purely English
type.

Seen thus, the face looked strangely familiar to Sara, and yet no memory
of hers could recall her mother as she must have been at the time this
portrait was painted.

The miniature still in her hand, she moved hesitatingly to a mirror, so
placed that the light from the window fell full upon her as she faced
it. In a moment the odd sense of familiarity was explained. There,
looking back at her from the mirror, was the same sharply angled face,
the same warm ivory pallor of complexion, accentuated by raven hair and
black, sombre eyes. What was it Patrick had written? "_No woman with
your eyes and your mouth ever yet lived a loveless life._"

With a curious deliberation, Sara examined the features in question. The
eyes we