t was Sydney who had inherited the golden hair and regular features
which, as his mother said, ought to have belonged to Lettice and not to
him; but she loved him all the more dearly for his resemblance to her
family and to herself. It escaped her observation that Sydney's
blue-grey eyes were keener, his mouth more firmly closed and his jaw
squarer than those of most boys or men, and betokened, if physiognomy
goes for anything, a new departure in character and intellect from the
ways in which Mrs. Campion and her family had always walked. A fair,
roseate complexion, and a winning manner, served to disguise these
points of difference; and Mrs. Campion had not quick sight for anything
which did not lie upon the surface, in the character of those with whom
she had to do.

She was usually to be found in the drawing-room--a faded, pretty woman,
little over fifty years of age, but with the delicate and enfeebled air
of the semi-invalid--a white shawl round her shoulders, a bit of
knitting or embroidery between her incapable, uncertain fingers. Her
hair was very grey, but the curliness had never gone out of it, and it
sprang so crisply and picturesquely from her white, unwrinkled forehead
that it seemed a pity to hide any of the pretty waves even by the crown
of fine old lace which Mrs. Campion loved. She was a woman at whom no
one could look without a sense of artistic satisfaction, for her face
was still charming, and her dress delicately neat and becoming. As for
her mental and moral qualities, she was perfectly well satisfied with
them, and her husband was as satisfied as she--although from a somewhat
different point of view. And as she very properly remarked, if her
husband were satisfied with her, she did not know why she should be
called upon to regard any adverse opinion of the outer world. At the
same time she was an ardent disciple of Mrs. Grundy.

How this woman came to be the mother of a child like Lettice, it were,
indeed, hard to say. Sydney was fashioned more or less after Mrs.
Campion's own heart: he was brisk, practical, unimaginative--of a type
that she to some extent understood; but Lettice with her large heart,
her warm and passionate nature, her keen sensibilities and tender
conscience, was a continual puzzle to her mother. Especially at this
period of the girl's life, when new powers were developing and new
instincts coming into existence--the very time when a girl most needs
the help and comfort of a mo