and he never looked at her little
pale face and diminutive figure without a vague feeling that she was a
spirit dwelling on earth in elfish form, with a half-developed
contradictory nature, to remind him of his past weakness. Standing at
the head of the table, tall and straight, with her nobly poised head and
clear Saxon eyes, his other daughter awaited him, and met his gaze with
a bright smile; he always came back to her with a sense of comfort. But
Tita jealously brought his attention to herself again by pulling his
hand, and leading him to his chair, taking her own place close beside
him. He was a tall man, and her head did not reach his elbow, but she
ruled him. The father now asked a blessing; he always hesitated on his
way through it, once or twice, as though he had forgotten what to say,
but took up the thread again after an instant's pause, and went on.
When he came to the end, and said "Amen," he always sat down with a
relieved air. If you had asked him what he had said, he could not have
told you unless you started him at the beginning, when the old formula
would have rolled off his lips in the same vague, mechanical way. The
meal proceeded in comparative quiet; the boys no longer hummed and
shuffled their feet; they were engaged with the cakes. Tita refrained
from remarks save once, when Gabriel having dropped buttered crumbs upon
her dress, she succinctly threatened him with dismemberment. Douglas
gazed at her helplessly, and sighed.

"She will be a woman soon," he said to his elder daughter, when, an hour
or two later, she joined him in his own apartment, and drew from its
hiding-place her large sewing-basket, filled with Christmas presents.

"Oh no, father, she is but a child," answered Anne, cheerfully. "As she
grows older these little faults will vanish."

"How old is she?" said Douglas.

"Just thirteen."

The father played a bar of Mendelssohn noiselessly on the arm of his
chair with his long thin fingers; he was thinking that he had married
Tita's mother when she was hardly three years older. Anne was absorbed
in her presents.

"See, father, will not this be nice for Andre? And this for Gabriel? And
I have made such a pretty doll for Tita."

"Will she care for it, dear?"

"Of course she will. Did I not play with my own dear doll until I was
fourteen years old--yes, almost fifteen?" said the girl, with a little
laugh and blush.

"And you are now--"

"I am over sixteen."

"A great age," sa