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--wh