to the room. The little meal and its appointments--the eggs, the
home-made bread and preserves, the tempting butter and old-fashioned
silver gleaming among the flowers which Rose arranged with fanciful
skill in Japanese pots of her own providing--suggested the same
family qualities as the room. Frugality, a dainty personal
self-respect, a family consciousness, tenacious of its memories and
tenderly careful of all the little material objects, which were to
it the symbols of those memories--clearly all these elements entered
into the Leyburn tradition.

And of this tradition, with its implied assertions and denials,
clearly Catherine Leyburn, the eldest sister, was, of all the persons
gathered in this little room, the most pronounced embodiment. She
sat at the head of the table, the little basket of her own and her
mother's keys beside her. Her dress was a soft black brocade, with
lace collar and cuff, which had once belonged to an aunt of her
mother's. It was too old for her both in fashion and material, but
it gave her a gentle, almost matronly dignity, which became her.
Her long thin hands, full of character and delicacy, moved nimbly
among the cups; all her ways were quiet and yet decided. It was
evident that among this little party she, and not the plaintive
mother, was really in authority. To-night, however, her looks were
specially soft. The scene she had gone through in the afternoon
had left her pale, with traces of patient fatigue round the eyes
and mouth, but all her emotion was gone, and she was devoting herself
to the others, responding with quick interest and ready smiles to
all they had to say, and contributing the little experiences of her
own day in return.

Rose sat on her left hand in yet another gown of strange tint and