It was the picture of a face young and yet old, sad and yet with possibilities of merriment, thin and drawn and almost wrinkled, and with piercing eyes which, even in the dull lifelessness of the photograph, seemed to be burning themselves away.

Not a pleasing nor a good face; yet intensely pathetic because of its undisguised harassment.
Zerviah looked at it for a moment.
"She has never been much to either of us," he said to himself.

"And yet, when Malvina was alive, I used to think that she was hard on Bernardine.
I believe I said so once or twice.

But Malvina had her own way of looking at things.

Well, that is over now." He then, with characteristic speed, dismissed all thoughts which did not relate to Roman History; and the remembrance of Malvina, his wife, and Bernardine, his niece, took up an accustomed position in the background of his mind.
Bernardine had suffered a cheerless childhood in which dolls and toys took no leading part.