but her wig is flaxen.

As Clarissa enters, she hastily draws the stocking from her hand, and
rises to greet her. A faint blush mantles in her cheek, making one at
once understand that in by-gone days she had probably been considered
pretty.

"So unexpected, my dear Clarissa," she says, with as pleased a smile
as the poor thing ever conjures up, and a little weakness at the
knees, meant for a courtesy. "So very glad to see you,"--as, indeed,
she is.

In her earlier days she had been called a belle,--by her own
people,--and had been expected, accordingly, to draw a prize in the
marriage-market. But Penelope Proude had failed them, and, by so
doing, had brought down eternal condemnation on her head. In her
second season she had fallen foolishly but honestly in love with a
well-born but impecunious curate, and had married him in spite of
threats and withering sneers. With one consent her family cast her off
and consigned her to her fate, declaring themselves incapable of
dealing with a woman who could wilfully marry a man possessed of
nothing. They always put a capital N to this word, and perhaps they
were right, as at that time all Charlie Redmond could call his own was
seven younger brothers and a tenor voice of the very purest.

As years rolled on, though Mrs. Redmond never, perhaps, regretted her
marriage, she nevertheless secretly acknowledged to herself a
hankering after the old life, a longing for the grandeur and riches
that accrued to it (the Proudes for generations had been born and bred
and had thriven in the soft goods line), and hugged the demoralizing
thought to her bosom that a little more trade and a little less blue
blood would have made her husband a degree more perfect.

It pleased her when the county families invited the youthful Cissy to
their balls; and it warmed her heart and caused her to forget the
daily shifts and worries of life when the duchess sent her fruit and
game, accompanied by kind little notes. It above all things reconciled
her to her lot, when the heiress of Gowran Grange pulled up her pretty
ponies at her door, and running in, made much of her and her children,
and listened attentively to her grievances, as only a sympathetic
nature can.

To-day, Clarissa's visit, being early, and therefore unconventional,
and for that reason the more friendly, sweetens all her surroundings.
Miss Peyton might have put in an appearance thrice in the day later
on, yet her visits would not have b