oke with a
purpose, as if she knew of some difficulty, some danger that lay before
her. She had been trained to ask no questions, and therefore she kept
silence. But her lips trembled, and her beautiful brown eyes filled with
tears.

"Come, my dear child," said Sister Rose, taking her by the hand, after a
short pause, "I will take you to your mother. She will be ready for you
now. May God protect you and guide you in your way through the world!"

And Lesley lowered her head as if she had received a blessing. Sister
Rose was a woman whom Lesley honored and revered, and her words,
therefore, sank deep, and often recurred to the young girl's mind in
days to come.

They went in silence to the door of the parlor. Here Sister Rose
relinquished her pupil's hand, tapped three times on one of the panels,
and signed to Lesley to open the door. With a trembling hand Lesley
obeyed the sign; and in another moment she was in her mother's arms.

Lady Alice Brooke was a very attractive looking woman. She was tall,
slight, and graceful, and although she must have been close upon forty,
she certainly had not the appearance of a woman over four or five and
thirty. Her complexion was untouched by time: her cheeks were smooth and
fair, her blue eyes clear. Her pretty brown hair had perhaps lost a
little of the golden tinge of its youth, but it was still soft and
abundant. But the reason why people often turned to look at her did not
lie in any measure of grace and beauty that she possessed, so much as in
an indefinable air of distinction and refinement which seemed to pervade
her whole being, and marked her off from the rest of the world as one
made of finer clay than others.

Many people resented this demeanor--which was quite unconscious on Lady
Alice's part--and thought that it signified pride, haughtiness, coldness
of heart; but in all this they were greatly, if not altogether,
mistaken. Lady Alice was not of a cold nature, and she was never
willingly haughty; but in some respects, she was what the world calls
proud. She was proud of her ancient lineage; of the repute of her
family, of the stainlessness of its name. And she had brought up Lesley,
as far as she could, in the same old tradition.

Lesley was like her mother, and unlike, too. She had her mother's tall,
graceful figure; but there was much more vivacity in her face than there
had ever been in Lady Alice's; much more warmth and life and color.
There was more determinati