occasional examples to be met with in the world are always wonderful, to those who can believe in them. Susie, as was natural, was very imperfectly known by those about her. She was, everybody allowed, very good, but how far her goodness went beyond the surface, or whether it was not partially seeming, or if there might not be a certain sense of self-interest in being so good (for to be sure, in the atmosphere in which she had been brought up, goodness is the best policy), was a point sometimes discussed in the hospital, where, as in other places, it was a little difficult to realise that heavenly form of character. People thought, even when they had no doubt of her, that so much goodness was uninteresting, and that they would have liked her better with a few more faults, which probably was quite true. But Susie’s tranquil spirit was in much commotion this morning. She had slept little all night, and thought much. Susie was well aware of the tragedy of the family life. There were no secrets in it from her. And she had been brought up in the belief that the cloud of hereditary evil was so strong upon her brother, that to keep him in ignorance--to keep him if possible at a distance, where he could never know anything of the antecedents of his family--was the best thing for him. It did not occur to her that she herself was her father’s daughter, as much as John was his son, and that, if the hereditary principle was true, she ought to have shared her brother’s danger. This view of the subject was dismissed by the fact that she was a girl, and therefore her mother’s child, an opinion very fallacious, and not to be maintained for a moment, either by logic, reason, or experience. But, in spite of all these qualifying things, a foregone conclusion will always hold its place. She, it was felt, was in no danger, though she knew everything; but John, the boy! For him it was expedient that all precautions should be taken, with him there was a kind of miserable certainty that safeguards would fail.