y gray of the quiet river and even
the trees of the park, a dark mass beneath the pale summer sky. Although
the room was lit only by the twilight, in which the latest lingering
reflection of the sunset still lived, it looked bright to the girl who
had come from the heavy dusk and gloom of the corridors with their
roof-windows and their rows of grim doors. A room ought to look bright,
too, when the visitor on just appearing on its threshold is rushed upon
and clasped and kissed and greeted as "You dear, dear darling." Such a
welcome met Miss Grey, and then she was instantly drawn into the room,
the door of which was closed behind her.

The occupant of the room who thus welcomed Minola was a woman not far
short probably of forty years of age. She was short, she was decidedly
growing fat, she had a face which ought from its outlines and its color
to be rather humorous and mirthful than otherwise, and a pair of very
fine, deep, and consequently somewhat melancholy eyes. These eyes were
the only beauty of Miss Mary Blanchet's face. She had not good sight,
for all their brightness. When any one talked with her at some little
distance across a room, or even across a broad table, he could easily
see by the irresponsive look of the eyes--the eyes which never quite
found a common focus with his even during the most animated interchange
of thought--that Miss Blanchet had short sight. But Miss Blanchet always
frankly and firmly declined to put on spectacles. "I have only my eyes
to boast of, my dear," she said to all her female advisers, "and I am
not going to cover them with ugly spectacles, you may be sure." Hers was
a life of the simplest vanity, the most innocent affectation. Her eyes
had driven her into poetry, love, and disappointment. She was understood
to have loved very deeply and to have been deserted. None of her friends
could quite remember the lover, but every one said that no doubt there
must have been such a person. Miss Blanchet never actually spoke of
him, but she somehow suggested his memory.

Miss Blanchet was a poetess. She had published by subscription a volume
of verses, which was favorably noticed in the local newspapers and of
which she sent a copy to the Queen, whereof Her Majesty had been kindly
pleased to accept. Thus the poetess became a celebrity and a sort of
public character in Dukes-Keeton, and when her father died it was felt
that the town ought to do something for one who had done so much for it.