"I shall go to London."

"What are you to do in London?"

"Haven't I already told you that I have thought of every thing? When I
get to London I shall apply to some of my mother's old friends--friends
of hers in the time when she was a musician. Every body tells me I have
a voice--if I had only cultivated it. I _will_ cultivate it! I can live,
and live respectably, as a concert singer. I have saved money enough to
support me, while I am learning--and my mother's friends will help me,
for her sake."

So, in the new life that she was marking out, was she now unconsciously
reflecting in herself the life of her mother before her. Here was the
mother's career as a public singer, chosen (in spite of all efforts to
prevent it) by the child! Here (though with other motives, and under
other circumstances) was the mother's irregular marriage in Ireland,
on the point of being followed by the daughter's irregular marriage in
Scotland! And here, stranger still, was the man who was answerable for
it--the son of the man who had found the flaw in the Irish marriage, and
had shown the way by which her mother was thrown on the world! "My Anne
is my second self. She is not called by her father's name; she is called
by mine. She is Anne Silvester as I was. Will she end like Me?"--The
answer to those words--the last words that had trembled on the dying
mother's lips--was coming fast. Through the chances and changes of many
years, the future was pressing near--and Anne Silvester stood on the
brink of it.

"Well?" she resumed. "Are you at the end of your objections? Can you