"What sports of circumstances we are! I was looking round the table at lunch to-day and puzzling for the hundredth time over the question of temperament. Does it interest you at all? Do you find it a difficulty? Why are some of us born into the world handicapped with temperaments which hold us in chains all our days, and others with some natural charm or quality of mind which acts as an open sesame wherever they go? Look at Miggles! A plain, lonely old woman, without a sou. If she had been born with a `difficult' temper, she might have worked, and slaved, and fought with evil passions, and gone to bed every night of her life wearied out with the stress of battle, and when the need of her was past, her employers would have heaved a sigh of relief, and packed her off with a year's salary. Can't you hear her requiem? `a good creature, most painstaking--what a relief to be alone!' But Miggles! No sane creature would willingly send her away. You would as soon brick up windows to keep out the sun. She radiates happiness and content, without--this is the point--without effort on her own part! The effort to her would be to grumble and be disagreeable, yet she receives all the credit and appreciation which she would have more truly deserved in the other case. And Jean! Look at Jean! Honestly--we are both her devoted slaves--but honestly, is it by any virtue of her own? Does she reign by merit or by chance?" Vanna smiled. "I know what you mean. Jean is charming, but it is easier for her to be charming than for most people. Every glance in the glass must be as reviving as a tonic. She has no difficulty in making friends, for people advance three quarters of the way to meet her; and if by chance she is in a bad mood--well, she is charming still. Of course, if she were plain--" "Exactly! She reigns in a kingdom of chance, and by no merit of her own. Doesn't that seem rather hard on the unfortunates who start with a handicap--a restless, unsatisfied nature, for example--a nature which longs for the affection and appreciation which it seems fated never to receive; which suffers and struggles, and honestly sees no reason why life should be harder for it than for another? Yet there it is--the inequality, the handicap from the beginning. Jean has beauty and charm, but even these don't weigh so heavily in the balance as happiness; the aura of happiness and content which radiates from Miggles and her kind-- the Mark Tapleys of the world, who triumph over every sort of physical and material difficulty. You smile! Are you thinking of some one you know, some particular person who is included in this happy category?" "Yes; of a man I met only the other day--a man over thirty, with eyes like a child; clear, and unclouded, and happy. Yet he had known many anxieties; in a worldly sense I suppose he would be counted a failure, but, as you say, one _felt_ it, the aura of radiant happiness and content."