Lastly, as the crowning change of all, Leam came home from school; no longer the arrogant, embittered child, looking at life through the false medium of pride and ignorance, saying rude things and doing odd ones with the most perfect unconsciousness; but well-bred, graceful, sufficiently instructed not to make patent mistakes, and more beautiful by far than she had even promised to be. Her very eyes were lovelier, lovely as they had always been: they had more variety of expression, were more dewy and tender, and, if less tragic, were more spiritual. That hard, dry, burning passion which had devoured her of old time seemed to have gone, as also her savage Spanish pride. She had rounded and softened in body too, as in mind. Her skin was fairer; her lips were not so firmly closed, so rigid in line, so constricted in motion; her brows were more flexible and not so often knit together; and her slight, lithe figure was perfect in line and movement. Still, she had enough of her former manner of being for identity. Grave, quiet, laconic, direct, she was but a modification of the former Leam as they had known her--Leam, Pepita's daughter, and with blood in her veins that was not the ordinary blood of the ordinary British miss. Her father's artistic perceptions were gratified as he met her at the station and Leam turned her cheek to him voluntarily with tears in her eyes. Turning her cheek was apparently her idea of kissing; but if not too intense an expression of affection, it was at least an improvement on the old hard repulsion, and Sebastian accepted it as the concession it was meant to be. Indeed, they met somewhat as foes reconciled, or rather seeking to be reconciled, and Mr. Dundas did not wish to keep open old sores. Her cheek, turned to him somewhere about the ear, represented to his mind a peace-offering: her eyes full of tears were as a confession of past sins and a promise of amendment. Not that he understood why she was so much more effusive than of old, but if it augured a happier life together, he was glad. As they drove up to the door of the old home, crowded with memories and associations, a shudder passed over the girl: she grasped her father's hand in her own almost convulsively, and he heard her say below her breath, "Poor papa!" He wondered why she pitied him. The place must surely be full of memories of her mother for her: why did she say "Poor papa!" to him? He did not see what she saw--that peaceful September evening, and the bottle of cherry-water on the table, with the little phial of thirty deaths in her hand; and now the contents emptied into the harmless draught; and now madame pale and dead. The whole scene transacted itself vividly before her, and she shuddered at her memories and her past self, as always with a kind of vague wonder how she could have been so wicked, and where did she get the force, the courage, for such a cruel crime?