nquired.

Her words instantly recalled the portrait he had studied the preceding
night, and with that in his mind he took the picture she handed him and
silently compared the two.

Ah, the beauty of the spring, everywhere confronting him, was in that
face also; the joy of a life as yet pure, untainted, and untrammelled.
It was like looking into the faces of the spring flowers which reflect
only the sunshine, the purity and the sweetness of earth. There was a
touch of womanly dignity, too, in the poise of the head, but the
beautiful eyes, though lighted with the faint dawn of coming womanhood,
were the same as those that had appealed to him the night before with
their wistful longing.

"It is a fine portrait, but as I do not remember her, I cannot judge
whether it is like herself or not," he said, handing the picture to Mr.
Underwood, who seemed almost to devour it with his eyes, though he spoke
no word and not a muscle moved in his stern, immobile face.

"She is getting to be such a young lady," remarked Mrs. Dean, "that I
expect when she comes home we will feel as though she had grown away
from us all."

"She will never do that, Marcia, never!" said Mr. Underwood, brusquely,
as he abruptly left the group and went into the house.

There was a moment's silence, then Mrs. Dean said, in a low tone,--

"She is getting to look just like her mother. I haven't seen David so
affected since his wife died as he was when that picture came
yesterday."

Darrell bowed silently, in token that he understood.

"She was a lovely woman, but she was very different from any of our
folks," she added, with a sigh, "and I guess Katherine is going to be
just like her."

"When is Miss Underwood expected home?" Darrell inquired.

"About the last of June," was the reply.

Long after the sun had set Darrell paced up and down the veranda,
pausing at intervals to gaze with unseeing eyes out over the peaceful
scene below him, his only companions his own troubled thoughts. The
young moon was shining, and in its pale radiance his set face gleamed
white like marble.

Like, and yet unlike, it was to the face of the sleeper journeying
westward on that summer afternoon eight months before. Experience, the
mighty sculptor, was doing his work, and doing it well; only a few lines
as yet, here and there, and the face was already stronger, finer. But it
was the face of one hardened by his own sufferings, not softened by the
sufferings of others.