over her work. It was a very charming face, with level grey eyes, wide
apart, and a mouth of great sweetness. There was a fugitive dimple on one
side of it that gave her a girlish appearance when she smiled. But she
was not a girl. There was about her an air of quiet confidence as of one
who knew something of the world and its ways. She was young still, and it
was yet in her to be ardent; but she had none of the giddy restlessness
of youth. Avery Denys was a woman who had left her girlhood wholly behind
her. Her enthusiasms and her impulses were kindled at a steadier flame
than the flickering torch of youth. There was no romance left in her
life, but yet was she without bitterness. She had known suffering and
faced it unblanching. The only mark it had left upon her was that air of
womanly knowledge that clothed her like a garment even in her lightest
moods. Of a quick understanding and yet quicker sympathy, she had
learned to hold her emotions in check, and the natural gaiety of her hid
much that was too sacred to be carelessly displayed. She had a ready
sense of humour that had buoyed her up through many a storm, and the
brave heart behind it never flinched from disaster. As her father had
said of her in the long-ago days of happiness and prosperity, she took
her hedges straight.

For several minutes after Jeanie's weary little confidence, she worked
in silence; then suddenly, with needle poised, she looked across at
the child.

Jeanie's head was bent over her exercise-book. Her hair lay in a heavy
mass all about her shoulders. There was a worried frown between her
brows. Slowly her hand travelled across the page, paused, wrote a word or
two, paused again.

Suddenly from the room above them there came the shrill shriek of a