Yes! Margaret had her reward in this alone--that she had cared to
decipher the lined old document of her mother's face. Her other sisters
had passed it by more or less impatiently. It was like some ancient
manuscript in a museum, which only a loving and patient scholar takes
the trouble to read. But the moment you begin to pick out the words, how
its crabbed text blossoms with beautiful meanings and fascinating
messages! It is as though you threw a dried rose into some magic water,
and saw it unfold and take on bloom, and fill with perfume, and bring
back the nightingale that sang to it so many years ago. So Margaret
loved her mother's old face, and learned to know the meaning of every
line on it. Privileged to see that old face in all its private moments
of feeling, under the transient revivification of deathless memories,
she was able, so to say, to reconstruct its perished beauty, and
realize the romance of which it was once the alluring candle. For her
mother had been a very great beauty, and if, like Margaret, you are able
to see it, there is no history so fascinating as the bygone love-affairs
of old people. How much more fascinating to read one's mother's
love-letters than one's own!

Even in the history of the heart recent events have a certain crudity,
and love itself seems the more romantic for having lain in lavender for
fifty years. A certain style, a certain distinction, beyond question, go
with antiquity, and to spend your days with a refined old mother is no
less an education in style and distinction than to spend them in the air
of old cities, under the shadow of august architecture and in the sunset
of classic paintings.

The longer Margaret lived with her old mother, the less she valued the
so-called "opportunities" she had missed. Coming out of her mother's