We have discoursed in another place of family circles, but it cannot be truthfully said that at any moment the Lemuel Hamiltons had ever assumed that symmetrical and harmonious shape.  Still, during the first eight or ten years of their married life, when the children were young, they had at least appeared to the casual eye as, say, a rectangular parallelogram.  A little later the cares and jolts of life wrenched the right angles a trifle “out of plumb,” and a rhomboid was the result.  Mrs. Hamilton had money of her own, but wished Lemuel to amass enough fame and position to match it.  She liked a diplomatic life if her husband could be an ambassador, but she thought him strangely slow in achieving this dignity.  No pleasure or pride in her husband’s ability to serve his country, even in a modest position, ever crossed her mind.  She had no desire to spend her valuable time in various poky Continental towns, and she had many excuses for not doing so; the proper education of her children being the chief among them.  Luckily for her, good and desirable schools were generally at an easy distance from the jewellers’ shops and the dressmakers’ and milliners’ establishments her soul loved, so while Mr. Hamilton did his daily task in Antwerp, Mrs. Hamilton resided mostly in Brussels or Paris; when he was in Zittau, in Saxony, she was in Dresden.  If he were appointed to some business city she remained with him several months each year, and spent the others in a more artistic and fashionable locality.  The situation was growing difficult because the children were gradually getting beyond school age, although there still remained to her the sacred duty of settling them properly in life.  Agnes, her mother’s favorite, was still at school, and was devoted to foreign languages, foreign manners, and foreign modes of life.  Edith had grown restless and developed an uncomfortable fondness for her native land, so that she spent most of her time with her mother’s relatives in New York, or in visiting school friends here or there.  The boys had gone far away; Jack, the elder, to Texas, where he had lost what money his father and mother had put into his first business venture; Thomas, the younger, to China, where he was woefully lonely, but doing well in business.  A really good diplomatic appointment in a large and important city would have enabled Mr. Hamilton to collect some of his scattered sons and daughters and provide them with the background for which his wife had yearned without ceasing (and very audibly) for years.  But Mr. Hamilton did not get the coveted appointment, and Mrs. Hamilton did not specially care for Mr. Hamilton when he failed in securing the things she wanted.  This was the time when the laughing-wrinkles began to fade away from Mr. Hamilton’s eyes, just for lack of daily use; and it was then that the corners of his mouth began to turn down; and his shoulders to stoop, and his eye to grow less keen and brave, and his step less vigorous.  It may be a commonplace remark,