at can you expect?
She's not made of iron, and she suffers accordingly. No, my dear, you
needn't deny it. I see you've got a headache."

Norah's dark, handsome face brightened into a smile--then lightly
clouded again with its accustomed quiet reserve.

"A very little headache; not half enough to make me regret the concert,"
she said, and walked away by herself to the window.

On the far side of a garden and paddock the view overlooked a stream,
some farm buildings which lay beyond, and the opening of a wooded,
rocky pass (called, in Somersetshire, a Combe), which here cleft its way
through the hills that closed the prospect. A winding strip of road was
visible, at no great distance, amid the undulations of the open ground;
and along this strip the stalwart figure of Mr. Vanstone was now
easily recognizable, returning to the house from his morning walk. He
flourished his stick gayly, as he observed his eldest daughter at the
window. She nodded and waved her hand in return, very gracefully and
prettily--but with something of old-fashioned formality in her manner,
which looked strangely in so young a woman, and which seemed out of
harmony with a salutation addressed to her father.

The hall-clock struck the adjourned breakfast-hour. When the minute hand
had recorded the lapse of five minutes more a door banged in the bedroom
regions--a clear young voice was heard singing blithely--light, rapid
footsteps pattered on the upper stairs, descended with a jump to the
landing, and pattered again, faster than ever, down the lower flight.
In another moment the youngest of Mr. Vanstone's two daughters (and two
only surviving children) dashed into view on the dingy old oaken stairs,
with the suddenness of a flash of light; and clearing the last three
steps into the hall at a jump, presented herself breathless in the
breakfast-room to make the family circle complete.

By one of those strange caprices of Nature, which science leaves still
unexplained, the youngest of Mr. Vanstone's children presented no
recognizable resemblance to either of her parents. How had she come by
her hair? how had she come by her eyes? Even her father and mother had
asked themselves those questions, as she grew up to girlhood, and
had been sorely perplexed to answer them. Her hair was of that purely
light-brown hue, unmixed with flaxen, or yellow, or red--which is
oftener seen on the plumage of a bird than on the head of a human being.
It was soft and