but it came to the same thing in the end, and the
men profited equally.

All these changes Sebastian Dundas found to have taken place when he
returned to North Aston with gray hair instead of brown, his smooth,
fair skin tanned and roughened, and his weak, finely-cut, effeminate
mouth hidden by a moustache of a reddish tint, mingled with white.
Still, he was Sebastian; and after the first shock of his altered
appearance had been got over, Josephine carried her incense in the old
way, and found her worship as dear and as tantalizing as ever.

Lastly, as the crowning change of all, Leam came home from school;
no longer the arrogant, embittered child, looking at life through the
false medium of pride and ignorance, saying rude things and doing odd
ones with the most perfect unconsciousness; but well-bred, graceful,
sufficiently instructed not to make patent mistakes, and more
beautiful by far than she had even promised to be. Her very eyes were
lovelier, lovely as they had always been: they had more variety of
expression, were more dewy and tender, and, if less tragic, were more
spiritual. That hard, dry, burning passion which had devoured her of
old time seemed to have gone, as also her savage Spanish pride. She
had rounded and softened in body too, as in mind. Her skin was fairer;
her lips were not so firmly closed, so rigid in line, so constricted
in motion; her brows were more flexible and not so often knit
together; and her slight, lithe figure was perfect in line and
movement. Still, she had enough of her former manner of being for
identity. Grave, quiet, laconic, direct, she was but a modification
of the former Leam as they had known her--Leam, Pepita's daughter,
and with blood in her veins that was not the ordinary blood of the
ordinary British miss.

Her father's artistic perceptions were gratified as he met her at the
station and Leam turned her cheek to him voluntarily with tears in her
eyes. Turning her cheek was apparently her idea of kissing; but if not
too intense an expression of affection, it was at least an improvement
on the old hard repulsion, and Sebastian accepted it as the concession
it was meant to be. Indeed, they met somewhat as foes reconciled, or
rather seeking to be reconciled, and Mr. Dundas did not wish to keep
open old sores. Her cheek, turned to him somewhere about the ear,
represented to his mind a peace-offering: her eyes full of tears were
as a confession of past sins and a promise o