Even now it gave her pain to recall her embarrassment when she was compelled to take her seat in the full blaze of the light and meet the eyes of the one to whom she felt that she must appear so very plain and unattractive.

Clad in the deepest mourning, pallid from grief and watching at her mother's bedside, coming from a life of seclusion and sorrow, sensitive in the extreme, she had barely reached that age when awkwardness is in the ascendant, and the quiet city home seemed the centre of a new and strange world.

One other thing she remembered in that initial chapter of her life,--the kindly glances that Graydon Muir bent on the pale crescent of a girl who sat opposite to him.

Even as a child she knew that the handsome young fellow was not secretly laughing at or criticising her, and before dinner was over she had ventured upon a shy, grateful glance, in reward for his good-humored efforts to break the ice.
There had, in truth, been no ice to break.

The child was merely like a plant that had grown in the shade, and to her the strong, healthful youth was sunshine.