nous voice only answered, "I can kiss
you, father;" and when she had laid her icicles of lips on his forehead,
she glided out of the room like a ghost that has accomplished its
mission and hastens away to its own place. Sir Ewes never tried to call
her back; he scarcely spoke at all intelligibly after that; but lay, for
the few remaining hours of life, moaning to himself, his face turned to
the wall.

For a very short time after her father's death, Mabel seemed to take a
pleasure in roaming about the gardens and woods from which she had been
debarred so long; but the walks grew gradually shorter, and she soon
shut herself up in the house entirely, seeing only a few of her near
relatives. It was one of these who, at her own request, painted the
second portrait--a rude performance, but it must have been a likeness.
She seemed to feel an odd sort of satisfaction in looking at the two and
comparing them. Her brain was somewhat clouded and unsteady; but I fancy
she was counting up all the harm and wrong the hard world had done to
her, and calculating what amends would be made in the next. I doubt not
they were kind and pitiful and indulgent enough there; but on earth she
found no source of comfort strong enough to banish from her eyes that
terrible look which haunted them within five minutes of her end.

When spirits assemble from the four corners of heaven, how many thousand
companions, think you, will greet the Gileadite's daughter?

Before you saw Cecil Tresilyan's face, the curve of her neck, and the
way her head was set on it, told you that she was by no means exempt
from the family failing which had laid its hand so heavily on her
ancestors. Yet it was not a hard or habitually haughty, or even a very
decided face. There was nothing alarmingly severe about the slight
aquiline of the nose; the chin did not look as if it were "carved in
marble," or "clasped in steel," or as if it were made of any thing but
soft flesh prettily dimpled; the delicate scarlet lip, when it curled,
rarely went beyond sauciness; though the splendid violet eyes could well
express disdain, this was not their favorite expression--and they had
many. The head would certainly have been too small had it not been for
the glossy masses of dark chestnut hair sweeping down low all round it,
smooth and unbroken as a deep river in its first curl over a cataract.
Candid friends said her complexion was not bright enough; perhaps they
were right; but the colo