eir own special property. "It is
difficult for a man to hope to govern his own household when his
nearest and dearest turn him into open ridicule. Your little friend is
a witch. What shall we do with her?"

"Submit to her," says Clarissa. "Where is she? I want to see her."

"Cissy will find her for you. I dare say they are together, unless
your 'Madam Quicksilver,' as I call her, has taken to herself wings
and flown away."

He turns, as though to go with her.

"No, no," says Clarissa; "I shall easily find her by myself. Go, and
do what you meant to do before I stopped you."

Moving away from him, she enters the hall, and seeing a servant, is
conducted by her to a small room literally strewn with work of all
kinds. Books, too, lie here in profusion, and many pens, and numerous
bottles of ink, and a patriarchal sofa that never saw better days than
it sees now, when all the children prance over it, and love it, and
make much of it, as being their very own.

On this ancient, friend a tiny fairy-like girl is sitting, smiling
sweetly at Cissy Redmond, who is chattering to her gayly and is
plainly enchanted at having some one of her own age to converse with.

The fairy is very lovely, with red-gold hair, and large luminous blue
eyes, soft and dark, that can express all emotions, from deepest love
to bitterest scorn. Her nose is pure Greek; her lips are tender and
mobile; her skin is neither white nor brown, but clear and warm, and
somewhat destitute of color. Her small head is covered with masses of
wavy, luxuriant, disobedient hair, that shines in the light like
threads of living gold.

She is barely five feet in height, but is exquisitely moulded. Her
hands and feet are a study, her pretty rounded waist a happy dream.
She starts from the sofa to a standing position as Clarissa enters,
and, with a low, intense little cry, that seems to come direct from
her heart, runs to her and lays her arms gently round her neck.

Once again Clarissa finds herself in Brussels, with her chosen friend
beside her. She clasps Georgie in a warm embrace; and then Cissy
Redmond, who is a thoroughly good sort, goes out of the room, leaving
the new governess alone with her old companion.

"At last I see you," says Miss Broughton, moving back a little, and
leaning her hands on Clarissa's shoulders that she may the more easily
gaze at her. "I thought you would never come. All the morning I have
been waiting, and watching, and longing for y