would not readily go to Daisy if she was in trouble, but there was no
one to whom she would hurry with such certainty of welcome if she was
happy. And though, no doubt, sympathy, to be complete, must feel for
sorrow as keenly as it feels for joy, yet a nature that feels keenly for
joy and turns its back on sorrow is perhaps quite as fine a one as that
which, though it may be an excellent comforter, is rather of the nature
of a wet blanket when a happy soul appeals to it for sympathy. And on
joy, whether her own or that of another, Daisy never turned her back.
She delighted in the happiness of others.

CHAPTER II.

Daisy's father and mother had both died when she was quite young, and
not yet half-way through the momentous teens. For seven years after that
she had lived with her mother's sister, the inimitable Aunt Jeannie,
whom she wished to see every day. But though she had passed seven years
with her, she had barely seen her aunt's husband. It was his death, a
year ago, that had sent her to the Nottinghams, for Aunt Jeannie in a
crisis of nerves had been ordered abroad for a year, and was now on the
point of return, and, having returned, was to stay with Lady Nottingham
for the indefinite period which may be taken up by the finding of a
suitable house.

Daisy knew there had been trouble at the back of all this. Uncle
Francis, Aunt Jeannie's husband, had been called an invalid, and she
gathered that his ill-health was something not to be openly alluded to.
Morphia was connected with it, a "habit" was connected with it, and
since this was somehow disagreeable, she had long ago so successfully
banished it from her thoughts that her curiosity about it was a thing
without existence. Certainly he made Aunt Jeannie very unhappy, but Aunt
Jeannie, who was such a dear, and so young still--not more than thirty,
for she was the youngest of a family of whom Daisy's mother was the
eldest--had been always sedulous to hide disquietude from her niece. And
it was entirely characteristic of Daisy to be grateful for having it all
hid from her, and not even in thought to conjecture what it was all
about. During this year of separation from Aunt Jeannie, in which, as
she had said (and Daisy, with all her faults and limitations, was a
George Washington for truth), she had missed her every day, she had
always looked forward to her return, and, though she liked being with
Lady Nottingham very much, knew that she would ultimately go