length.

Mr. Yorke and she agreed perfectly well, yet he was naturally a social,
hospitable man, an advocate for family unity; and in his youth, as has
been said, he liked none but lively, cheerful women. Why he chose her,
how they contrived to suit each other, is a problem puzzling enough, but
which might soon be solved if one had time to go into the analysis of
the case. Suffice it here to say that Yorke had a shadowy side as well
as a sunny side to his character, and that his shadowy side found
sympathy and affinity in the whole of his wife's uniformly overcast
nature. For the rest, she was a strong-minded woman; never said a weak
or a trite thing; took stern, democratic views of society, and rather
cynical ones of human nature; considered herself perfect and safe, and
the rest of the world all wrong. Her main fault was a brooding, eternal,
immitigable suspicion of all men, things, creeds, and parties; this
suspicion was a mist before her eyes, a false guide in her path,
wherever she looked, wherever she turned.

It may be supposed that the children of such a pair were not likely to
turn out quite ordinary, commonplace beings; and they were not. You see
six of them, reader. The youngest is a baby on the mother's knee. It is
all her own yet, and that one she has not yet begun to doubt, suspect,
condemn; it derives its sustenance from her, it hangs on her, it clings
to her, it loves her above everything else in the world. She is sure of
that, because, as it lives by her, it cannot be otherwise, therefore she
loves it.

The two next are girls, Rose and Jessy; they are both now at their
father's knee; they seldom go near their mother, except when obliged to
do so. Rose, the elder, is twelve years old; she is like her father--the
most like him of the whole group--but it is a granite head copied in
ivory; all is softened in colour and line. Yorke himself has a harsh
face--his daughter's is not harsh, neither is it quite pretty; it is
simple, childlike in feature; the round cheeks bloom: as to the gray
eyes, they are otherwise than childlike; a serious soul lights them--a
young soul yet, but it will mature, if the body lives; and neither
father nor mother have a spirit to compare with it. Partaking of the
essence of each, it will one day be better than either--stronger, much
purer, more aspiring. Rose is a still, sometimes a stubborn, girl now.
Her mother wants to make of her such a woman as she is herself--a woman
of da