had made up her mind, it dimpled her cheeks and transfigured her whole face, and revealed in her tenderness and a sense of humor. Her complexion was pale, but clear, her figure was slender and active, but without angularities, and she was of the middle height. Yet the quality which the eye first remarked in her was not so much her beauty, as a certain purity, a look almost of the Madonna, a certainty, one might say, that even in the circle in which she moved, she had kept herself unspotted from the world. Thus she looked as she sat by the carriage window. But as the train drew near to Ambérieu, the air brightened and the sunlight ministered to her beauty like a careful handmaid, touching her pale cheeks to a rosy warmth, giving a luster to her hair, and humanizing her to a smile. Sylvia sat forward a little, as though to meet the sunlight, then she turned toward the carriage and saw her mother's eyes intently watching her. "You are awake?" she said in surprise. "Yes, child. You woke me." "I am very sorry. I was as quiet as I could be. I could not sleep." "Why?" Mrs. Thesiger repeated the question with insistence. "Why couldn't you sleep?" "We are traveling to Chamonix," replied Sylvia. "I have been thinking of it all night," and though she smiled in all sincerity, Mrs. Thesiger doubted. She lay silent for a little while. Then she said, with a detachment perhaps slightly too marked: "We left Trouville in a hurry yesterday, didn't we?" "Yes," replied Sylvia, "I suppose we did," and she spoke as though this was the first time that she had given the matter a thought. "Trouville was altogether too hot," said Mrs. Thesiger; and again silence followed. But Mrs. Thesiger was not content. "How much does she know?" she speculated again, and was driven on to find an answer. She raised herself upon her elbow, and while rearranging her pillow said carelessly: "Sylvia, our last morning at Trouville you were reading a book which seemed to interest you very much." "Yes." Sylvia volunteered no information about that book.