Even now it gave her pain to recall her embarrassment when she
was compelled to take her seat in the full blaze of the light and
meet the eyes of the one to whom she felt that she must appear so
very plain and unattractive. Clad in the deepest mourning, pallid
from grief and watching at her mother's bedside, coming from a life of
seclusion and sorrow, sensitive in the extreme, she had barely reached
that age when awkwardness is in the ascendant, and the quiet city
home seemed the centre of a new and strange world. One other thing she
remembered in that initial chapter of her life,--the kindly glances
that Graydon Muir bent on the pale crescent of a girl who sat opposite
to him. Even as a child she knew that the handsome young fellow was
not secretly laughing at or criticising her, and before dinner was
over she had ventured upon a shy, grateful glance, in reward for his
good-humored efforts to break the ice.
There had, in truth, been no ice to break. The child was merely like
a plant that had grown in the shade, and to her the strong, healthful
youth was sunshine. His smile warmed and vivified her chilled nature,
his hearty words and manner were bracing to her over-sensitive and
timid soul, and his unaffected, unforced kindness was so constant that
she gradually came to regard it as one of the best certainties of her
life.
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