the face and form, and rigidly testing both by the
fastidious canons that often rendered him hypercritical, Mr. Palma
could find no flaw in contour or in colouring, save that the
complexion was too dazzlingly white, lacking the rosy tinge which
youth and health are wont to impart.

Stretching his arm to the escritoire, he softly opened a side drawer,
took out an oval-shaped engraving of his favourite Sappho, and
compared the nose, chin, and ear with those of the unconscious girl.
Satisfied with the result, he restored the picture to its
hiding-place. Four years had materially changed the countenance he
had seen last at the parsonage, but the almost angelic purity of
expression which characterized her as a child, had been intensified
by time and recent grief, and watching her in her motionless repose
he thought that unquestionably she was the fairest image he had ever
seen in flesh; though a certain patient sadness about her beautiful
lips told him that the waves of sorrow were already beating hoarsely
upon the borders of her young life.

Standing upon his own hearth, a man of magnificent stature and almost
haughty bearing, Erle Palma looked quite forty, though in reality
younger; and the stern repression, the cautious reticence which had
long been habitual, seemed to have hardened his regular handsome
features. Weary with the business cares, the professional details of
a trip that had yielded him additional laurels and distinction, and
gratified his towering pride, he had come home to rest; and found it
singularly refreshing to study the exquisite picture of innocence
lying on his library rug.

He wondered how the parents of such a child could entrust her to the
guardianship of strangers; and whether it would be possible for her
to carry her peculiar look of holy purity safely into the cloudy
Beyond--of womanhood?

While he pondered the clock struck, and Regina awoke.

At sight of that tall stately figure, looming like a black statue
between her and the glow of the grate, she sprang first into a
sitting posture, then to her feet.

He made no effort to assist her, only watched every movement, and
when she stood beside him, he held out his hand.

"Regina, I am glad to see you in my house; and am sorry I could not
have been at home to receive you."

Painfully embarrassed by the thought of the position in which he had
found her, she covered her face with her hand; and at the sound of
his grave deep voice the bloo