In Virginia's eyes, as she turned back in the doorway to watch her, there was a radiant self-forgetfulness which illumined her features. For a moment she lived so completely in her daughter's youth that her body seemed to take warmth and colour from the emotion which transfigured her. "I am so glad, darling," she said. "It gives me more pleasure to see you in them than it does to wear them myself." And though she did not know it, she embodied her gentle philosophy of life in that single sentence. CHAPTER III MIDDLE-AGE Jenny had promised to come home a week before Lucy's wedding, but at the last moment, while they waited supper for her, a telegram announced with serious brevity that she was "detained." Twenty-four hours later a second telegram informed them that she would not arrive until the evening before the marriage, and at six o'clock on that day, Virginia, who had been packing Lucy's trunks ever since breakfast, looked out of the window at the sound of the door-bell, and saw the cab which had contained her second daughter standing beside the curbstone. "Mother, have you the change to pay the driver?" asked a vision of stern loveliness floating into the room. With the winter's glow in her cheeks and eyes and the bronze sheen on her splendid hair, which was brushed in rippling waves from her forehead and coiled in a severely simple knot on her neck, she might have been a wandering goddess, who had descended, with immortal calm, to direct the affairs of the household. Her white shirtwaist, with its starched severity, suited her austere beauty and her look of almost superhuman composure. "Take off your hat, darling, and lie down on the couch while I finish Lucy's packing," said Virginia, when she had sent the servant downstairs to pay the cabman. Her soul was in her eyes while she watched Jenny remove her plain felt hat, with its bit of blue scarf around the crown--a piece of millinery which presented a deceptive appearance of inexpensiveness--and pass the comb through the shining arch of her hair. "I am so sorry, mother dear, I couldn't come before, but there were some important lectures I really couldn't afford to miss. I am specializing in biology, you know."