e
hard handwriting of trouble had scored it heavily at some past time.
The self-possession of her progress downstairs, and the air of habitual
authority with which she looked about her, spoke well for her position
in Mr. Vanstone's family. This was evidently not one of the forlorn,
persecuted, pitiably dependent order of governesses. Here was a woman
who lived on ascertained and honorable terms with her employers--a woman
who looked capable of sending any parents in England to the right-about,
if they failed to rate her at her proper value.

"Breakfast at ten?" repeated Miss Garth, when the footman had answered
the bell, and had mentioned his master's orders. "Ha! I thought what
would come of that concert last night. When people who live in the
country patronize public amusements, public amusements return the
compliment by upsetting the family afterward for days together. _You're_
upset, Thomas, I can see your eyes are as red as a ferret's, and your
cravat looks as if you had slept in it. Bring the kettle at a quarter to
ten--and if you don't get better in the course of the day, come to me,
and I'll give you a dose of physic. That's a well-meaning lad, if you
only let him alone," continued Miss Garth, in soliloquy, when Thomas had
retired; "but he's not strong enough for concerts twenty miles off. They
wanted _me_ to go with them last night. Yes: catch me!"

Nine o'clock struck; and the minute-hand stole on to twenty minutes past
the hour, before any more footsteps were heard on the stairs. At the
end of that time, two ladies appeared, descending to the breakfast-room
together--Mrs. Vanstone and her eldest daughter.

If the personal attractions of Mrs. Vanstone, at an earlier period of
life, had depended solely on her native English charms of complexion and
freshness, she must have long since lost the last relics of her fairer
self. But her beauty as a young woman had passed beyond the average
national limits; and she still preserved the advantage of her more
exceptional personal gifts. Although she was now in her forty-fourth
year; although she had been tried, in bygone times, by the premature
loss of more than one of her children, and by long attacks of illness
which had followed those bereavements of former years--she still
preserved the fair proportion and subtle delicacy of feature, once
associated with the all-adorning brightness and freshness of beauty,
which had left her never to return. Her eldest child, now