iption well enough," said the other, "same light
hair."

Both of the men waved their hands to Ellen as they passed on, but
she shrank back afraid. That was about ten o'clock of the morning of
the day after Miss Lennox had taken her into her house. She had
waked at dawn with a full realization of the situation. She
remembered perfectly all that had happened. She was a child for whom
there were very few half-lights of life, and no spiritual twilights
connected her sleeping and waking hours. She opened her eyes and
looked around the room, and remembered how she had run away and how
her mother was not there, and she remembered the strange lady with
that same odd combination of terror and attraction and docility with
which she had regarded her the night before. It was a very cold
morning, and there was a delicate film of frost on the windows
between the sweeps of the muslin curtains, and the morning sun gave
it a rosy glow and a crusting sparkle as of diamonds. The sight of
the frost had broken poor Andrew Brewster's heart when he saw it,
and reflected how it might have meant death to his little tender
child out under the blighting fall of it, like a little
house-flower.

Ellen lay winking at it when Cynthia Lennox came into the room and
leaned over her. The child cast a timid glance up at the tall,
slender figure clad in a dressing-gown of quilted crimson silk which
dazzled her eyes, accustomed as she was to morning wrappers of
dark-blue cotton at ninety-eight cents apiece; and she was filled
with undefined apprehensions of splendor and opulence which might
overwhelm her simple grasp of life and cause her to lose all her old
standards of value.

She had always thought her mother's wrappers very beautiful, but now
look at this! Cynthia's face, too, in the dim, rosy light, looked
very fair to the child, who had no discernment for those ravages of
time of which adults either acquit themselves or by which they
measure their own. She did not see the faded color of the woman's
face at all; she did not see the spreading marks around mouth and
eyes, or the faint parallels of care on the temples; she saw only
that which her unbiased childish vision had ever sought in a human
face, love and kindness, and tender admiration of herself; and her
conviction of its beauty was complete. But at the same time a bitter
and piteous jealousy for her mother and home, and all that she had
ever loved and believed in, came over her. What right